assignments
due Thu Jan 28
Wireshark 101
- Tell me a little about your computer background.
- Read this article : wikipedia:internet
- What do you already know about how the internet works?
- Download and install Wireshark, and try to capture a few packets. Describe you experience, and what you saw.
- Read chapter 1 in Matthews' text, pages 1 to 40.
- Answer, if you can, some of the questions from page 27 and 28 in the text, which look at simpleHttp.cap from the text's CD.
- Let me know how this first week of getting things going went for you.
due Thu Feb 4
HTTP
- Read chapter 2.1, 2.2 in Matthews' text, on HTTP. Start 2.3, 2.4.
- Read wikipedia: http
- Do any two exerises on pages 54, 55 from Matthews' text.
- Do exercises 5,6,7 on page 64 from Matthews' text.
- Use wireshark to capture the packets to and from your laptop as you fetch a web page:
- Start wireshark capturing packets.
- Open a browser; load a page.
- Stop wireshark.
- Discuss what you see:
- What are the HTTP commands sent to the server?
- What (exactly) files did your laptop ask for?
- What (exactly) was the reply?
- Another way:
- What is a web "cookie"? Which computer(s) sends it where? Why? Can you see any cookies in either Wireshark or Tampter Data's display?
due Thu Feb 11
email
Email is one of the integral pieces of the 'net. This week we look at how it works - and doesn't work.
- Read section 2.4 in the text.
- Followup with wikipedia's article on the topic, and some related articles :
- On page 85, do questions 1, 2, and 5 with Wireshark and the Matthews' .cap files.
- How do you yourself read and send email? How many ways can you discover to do so on our campus? (Hint: http://www.marlboro.edu/offices/it/faq/ )
- On our campus, is it possible to use SMTP? POP3? Web clients? Give at least two different examples using two different technologies.
- Why is spam such a problem? Discuss what it is and why it's an issue, in both technical and economic terms.
- Examine and discuss the full headers from (a) a typical email message, and (b) a spam message, explaining what all the gobbledy-gook in there means in terms of who sent the message and which routers it went through.
- Add some terms to the course glossary.
due Thu Feb 18
TCP
This week we're going to look at the innards of TCP, particularly the "sequence numbers" and "windows",
and get through section 3 in the text. We'll skip UDP and the latter parts.
due Thu Feb 25
IP
- Read section 4.1 and 4.2 in the text, on IP and DHCP. (Ignore 4.3 and 4.4)
- Followup with a browse through related topics on wikipedia and the TCP/IP guide.
- On page 151, do questions 1, 2, and 3.
- Also on page 151, look into and discuss "discussion and investigation" question 3, on CIDR and NAT. (We use NAT on our campus.) Describe what they are, and how they're used.
- Type "traceroute" into google. The top hits (e.g. network-tools.com and traceroute.org) are web apps that will run ping and traceroute for you. Using one of them or ping/traceroute from the command line, find the round trip time to machines at various geographic distances. Discuss the results. Is there a reason to use the internet rather than a local ping/traceroute? Vice versa?
due Thu Mar 4
networks and security
This is our last week in Matthew's book before moving into web page design.
We won't be spending a lot of time with the last two chapters,
but they're worth reading and discussing.
- Read chapters 5 (ethernet, wireless networks, MAC addresses) and chapters 6 (security) in Matthews' text.
- Answer question 2 on page 208: How many more ethernet addresses are there than IP addresses?
- From the reading or googling, what are the differences between a "hub", a "switch", and a "router"?
- Explain what an "ARP cache" is, and what "ARP poisoning" means. How could you tell if that was going on?
- Look up and explain the following terms: 802.11, WEP, WPA. Which ones are used on our campus?
- Do some reading on Kismet or Kismac ; wikipedia: kismet (software) . What is it, and what can it do?
- On page 247, do questions 5, 6, and 7 that look at the differences between HTTP and HTTPS. Explain what's going on, and how the HTTPS protocol works. What is a "key exchange"? What sorts of keys are are exchanged? Do any followup googling or reading on these topics that you need to; the text is a bit thin.
due Sat Mar 13
midterm project
- Using as many of the topics we've talked about this semester as you can, analyze the packets of an internet conversation between your laptop and another site. This could be just a webpage loading (with its associated files), a bittorrent session, or whatever you like. Include things like the DNS lookup, how many packets are involved, from which hosts, how much data, which protocols, and so on. Discuss the entire "protocol stack" including both low and high levels. The whole effort should be comparable to a five page paper.
due Tue Apr 6
HTML and CSS v1
- Read up through at least chapter 10 in Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML.
- Create a set of web pages that
- contain a home page and at least two other pages, all linked together,
- on any topic that interests you,
- have at least three images embedded somewhere,
- uses at least the following tags: a, p, div, ul, li, span, h1, h2
- hve XHTML declarations at the top,
- pass W3C validation,
- has some CSS in its own file.
- Discuss how easy or hard this was, and what you like or don't like about the result.
- We will likely extend this set of pages, so pick a topic you don't mind continuing to play around with. I'm thinking along the lines of the "lounge" web pages in the "Head First" book, but on a different topic and with different specifics and look.
due Tue Apr 13
continue CSS
- Continue working through the text.
- Create a spiffier version of the last assignment, with CSS positioning and layout. Discuss your progress.
due Tue Apr 20
practice
- Discuss what you've been reading and trying, and submit your latest work.
due Tue Apr 27
final project proposal
- Describe what your final project will be.
due Fri May 7
final project
- Submit a web site that shows what you've covered in this second half the semester.
- It should have
- a home page and two other pages
- clear navigation and "where am I" information
- valid HTML and CSS
- layout done with CSS
- a reasonable design, following our discussion of the issues
- some images
- Also include a short write-up describing the process: what you did, which tools you used, what you'd differently next time, which online and offline resources were particularly helpful, and so on.
- Due date extensions up to Mon morning may be granted upon request. So if you need more time - ask.
term grade
- a place for Jim to record the overall grade
