This is a graduate-level course in telecommunications. See the
CS 535 course catalog entry
for more information.
The prerequisites for this class are
CS 505, Operating Systems
Concepts and CS 514,
Networking.
The course is divided into seven two-week sections. See the syllabus for details.
The class meets in Howard Hall 530 on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4:00 p.m. to
5:50 p.m. The last day to withdraw from class with a W on your
transcript is Tuesday, 9 November.
This course studies the protocols, architectures, and performance of the four
lowest layers of the ISO OSI reference model. Case studies and examples on most
recent computer and telecommunications systems will be covered.
R. Clayton, Howard B-13, rclayton@monmouth.edu, 732 263 5522. My
office hours for CS 535 are from 6 to 7 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays in
my office. I'm also usually happy to talk to you any time you can catch me;
setting up an appointment is recommended, see
my schedule for available times.
The usual grade ranges are in effect:
| 95 | <= | A | | |
| 90 | <= | A- | < 95 | |
| 86.6 | <= | B+ | < 90 | |
| 83.3 | <= | B | < 86.6 | |
| 80 | <= | B- | < 83.3 | |
| 76.6 | <= | C+ | < 80 | |
| 73.3 | <= | C | < 76.6 | |
| 70 | <= | C- | < 73.3 | |
| | F | < 70 | |
All grades are kept with one digit of precision to the right of the decimal
point and 0.05 rounded up. No grades are adjusted to a curve; that means, for
example, that 89.9 is always a B+, never an A-.
The final grade for this class is the average of three grades: quiz grades, a
presentation grade, and a project or paper grade, with the following weights:
| quiz grades | 40% |
| presentation grade | 25% |
| paper or project grade | 35% |
There will be seven Quizes, one quiz for each of the seven sections; see
the syllabus for the schedule. Quizes will be given in class, and are closed book
with no notes; calculators and computers will not be necessary. The quizes are
cumulative, covering everything taught up to and including the class before the
quiz. Quizes should take no more than a half-hour to complete, and will be
given within the first hour of class. Quiz answers will be made available off
the syllabus. There will be no other quizes; no mid-terms or finals.
The quizes will make up half the final grade; the other half will come from
either a project or a term paper.
Towards the end of the semester (probably in the last six weeks) teams of two
students will lead the discussion of the week's paper. The discussion should
be about an hour long and will be given on Mondays after the quiz. Students
may form their own groups and pick the paper they want to discuss. Grades will
be based on evaluations from both the students and the instructor, with the
instructor having the final say.
Each student has the choice of doing either a term paper or a programming
project, both of which are due at the end of the semester. Details about the
term paper and programming project will be forthcoming.
There is no textbook; course readings will be from a series of papers, which
will be available on the syllabus. The course bibliography
contains books that cover the topics of the course in greater detail.
You should feel free to send me e-mail. Unless I warn you beforehand, I'll
usually respond within a couple of hours during the usual work days; if I don't
respond within a day, resend the message.
Mail relevant to the class will be stored in a
hyper-mail
archive. If your message is of general interest to the class, I'll store it,
suitably stripped of identification and along with my answer, in the archive.
If you're reading this on paper, you can find the class home page at
http://www.monmouth.edu/rclayton/web-pages/f04-535/index.html. I'll
make the class notes, assignments, and quizes available off the syllabus; you should
get in the habit of checking the home page and syllabus regularly.
People who need assistance or accommodations above and beyond what is usually
provided in class should contact the University's ADA/504 coordinator to get
those needs met. See me or the
Disability
Services page for more details.
I have no class attendance policy; you may attend class or not as you see fit.
However, I hold you responsible for knowing everything that goes on in class;
"I wasn't in class for that." is not an acceptable excuse for a wrong
answer, or for giving no answer at all.
My attendance policy applies only to lecture attendance; it does not apply to
other kinds of attendance which may be required for the course. Repeated
failures to meet the attendance expectations set for tests, meetings, projects,
labs or other forms of course work will have a bad influence on your grade.
I deal with suspected cheating by failing first and asking questions later.
Although cheating has many forms, I generally consider cheating to be any
attempt to claim someone else's work as your own; also, I consider both the
provider and the user of the work guilty of cheating. See the chapters on
Academic Information and the Student Code of Conduct in the Student Handbook
for more details.
I recognize and encourage a student's sacred right to complain about their
grade. There are, however, a few rules under which such complaining should
take place, and those students who don't follow the rules will be less
successful in their complaints than those students who do follow the rules.
First, the only complaint that matters is that something got marked wrong when
it was actually right. When you come to complain, be prepared to present, in
explicit detail, what it is you did and why you think it's right.
Second, complaints about a particular test or assignment are only valid until
the next test or assignment is due; after that point the book is permanently
closed on all previous test or assignment grades.
Assignments must be turned in by their due date; assignments turned in after
their due date are late. You should contact me as soon as possible if you need
to negotiate a due-date extension. The longer you wait to negotiate, the less
likely it is you'll be successful; in particular, you have almost no chance of
getting an extension if you try for one the day before the due date, and you
have no chance of getting an extention on the due date.
A late assignment is penalized five points a day for each day it's late. I use
a 24-hour clock running from midnight to midnight to measure days; note this
means that an assignment handed in the day after it's due is penalized ten
points: five for the day it was due and five for the next day.
There may occasionally be a conflict between taking a test and doing something
else, particularly among those working full time. If you're going to be out of
town, or on jury duty, or whatever, on a test day, let me know beforehand and
we'll discuss a make-up test.
A make-up test must be scheduled to be taken by the date of the test following
the missed test (or the final exam if you miss the last test). If a missed
test is not made up by the time of the next test, you get a zero for the missed
test.
There will be only one make up given per missed test. If more than one person
misses the same test, those people will have to coordinate among themselves to
pick a mutually agreeable date for the make up.
This page last modified on 30 November 2004.