This course provides laboratory experience complementary to the material covered in ECSE-414. The course consists of six experiments. Five of these will involve modeling and simulation of networks using OPNET Modeler and application of Internet measurement tools. The experiments will explore:

(a) TCP connections – overhead involved in connection setup, latency and loss phenomena, performance in congestion and congestion control parameters.

(b) MAC protocols – CSMA and CSMA/CD in Ethernet/LAN environments, and bridges for forwarding and filtering.

(c) Principles of SONET and ATM.

(d) Routing and IP issues.

(d) Multimedia network applications – use of the real-time streaming protocol to packetize and transport video over UDP, analysis of behaviour in congested networks, fairness issues..

Detailed Course Outline

Experiment 1 This experiment serves to introduce students to Opnet. Students complete four of the online tutorials and perform additional related tasks in order to illustrate their understanding of the material presented.

Experiment 4 This experiment makes use of Opnet's TCP project. Students examine the effects of propagation delay and throughput in determining how long TCP remains in the slow-start phase, and how enabling SACK changed these effects.  An implementation of high-speed TCP is also explored.

Experiment 5 The first component of this experiment involves two simple LANs, one using Token Ring as its MAC protocol, and the other using Ethernet. Students compare the performance of the two, as the traffic load and delay between stations is varied. The second part of the experiment examines OSPF routing, with students considering link failures, explicit cost assignment, and the upgrading of existing links, in order to understand the intricacies of the  routing algorithm.

Experiment 6 In the final experiment, students examine the behaviour of the RSVP QoS protocol.  Using the Opnet RSVP project as a starting point, students make several changes in order to determine how RSVP affects end-to-end delay and throughput. Students also examine the behaviour of RSVP when multiple connections compete for network resources.

 

Sample Student Reports 2003

Report 1 (Experiment 4), Report 2 (Experiment 5), Report 3 (Experiment 5).