Final Exam Tonight

Reminder, the final exam for CSC2281S12, Network Design and Queuing Theory will be held as an on-line Skype-supervised exam from 8 to 10 pm tonight, Monday, 14 May 2012. Please be online on Skype by 7:55 pm on a computer with a webcam so I can check student IDs. Even if you are behind and thinking of asking for an incomplete, you should take this exam.

Completing the Semester

Quiz 10, the last quiz for the semester other than the final has been posted on the assignments page

http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/.dowling/CSC2281S12/CSC2281_Assignments.html

The only items that will be accepted for grading within this semester after 4 May 2012 are: improvements to the project itself, no more than three redone quizzes and the final. Except for the final that work must be turned in no later than 5 pm on Friday, 11 May 2012.

Final Exam: The final exam will be a 2 hour Skype-supervised session, from 8 to 10 pm on Monday 14 May 2012. For the final you will need a computer with a webcam, Skype installed and your Dowling student ID. If you cannot be available then, you must arrange an alternate date for the exam with the instructor. You must make the arrangements on or before 1 May 2012. All work other than the final to be considered for grading must have been completed and turned in no later than 5 pm on Friday, 11 May 2012.

Assignment 8 and instructions for the final

Assignment 8 and instructions for the final have been posted to

http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/.dowling/CSC2281S12/CSC2281_Assignments.html

Your project is due on or before 4 May 2012. 

The only items that will be accepted for grading within this semster after 4 May 2012 are: improvements to the project itself, no more than three redone quizzes and the final. Except for the final that work must be turned in no later than 5 pm on Friday, 11 May 2012.

The final exam will be a 2 hour Skype-supervised session, from 8 to 10 pm on Monday 14 May 2012. For the final you will need a computer with a webcam, Skype installed and your Dowling student ID. If you cannot be available then, you must arrange an alternate date for the exam with the instructor. You must make the arrangements on or before 1 May 2012. All work other than the final to be considered for grading must have been completed and turned in no later than 5 pm on Friday, 11 May 2012.

Assignment 7

Assignment 7, which will take you past the Spring break
with Quizzes 7, 8 and 9 has been posted.  The focus of
this assignment is doing your project.  See

http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/.dowling/CSC2281S12/CSC2281_Assignments.html

for details.  Be sure to refresh your browser.

Assignments 5 and 6

Assignment 5 was posted on 24 February and Assignment 6 was posted on 9 March.  The midterm was given in between.  Students who had difficulty with the midterm should contact the instructor promptly.  It is important to get the tools involved under control to move forward with projects.  See the course assignment page at:

http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/.dowling/CSC2281S12/CSC2281_Assignments.html

CSC2281 Midterm

There will be an online midterm from 8 pm to 10 pm on Monday, 5 March 2012.  To take this midterm you must be online with Skype at 8 pm, have a webcam and have your student ID.  You will be given the URL for the midterm via Skype IM.

Assignment 4

It is time to work on assignment 4, even if you are not done with the first 3 assignments and their quizzes. Your objective for this week is to become proficient in working with the Ford-Fulkerson Max Flow Min Cut algorithm. You will find links on the assignments page for java software that implements the algorithm. Don't just run it -- understand it. Do Quiz 4 and then go back and redo the other quizzes. Help one another. Read the notes again. When you are done, you should have a gut understanding of Dijkstra's algorithm and Ford-Fulkerson. We are coming up on the midterm soon, and you will need to be able to do this to get through it.

Contact me if you get stuck, but one way or another this is the time to get this right.

Please note that starting immediately, Monday office hours in B205 are being replaced by Friday office hours for the rest of the semester. Please also note that I have Skype office hours at 8 pm on Tuesdays.

Correction to Quiz 2

There were some numbering errors in problems that referred to other problems in Quiz 2. The Quiz has been corrected and reposted. You all have until Friday, 17 February to redo Quiz 2 in parallel with Quiz 3, which is due at the same time. My apologies for the error. My thanks to Mr. Malejana for spotting the problem. -- HJB

Changes in the second Assignment

The second assignment has been posted, but it has changed.

Most people had serious difficulty with the first quiz. One person did not submit it at all. Everybody must understand that doing all the quiz questions is an essential part of completing the course, and the first few quizzes in particular relate to material you need to be able to do anything at all in this course. Therefore, I have added a great deal of additional instructional material to the second assignment. Be sure to refresh your browser when looking at the assignments page.

After you complete the readings and videos, you all must retake Quiz 1 and also take Quiz 2 by Friday 10 February.

You should look at your quiz results and the second assignment promptly and then contact me via Skype IM or email if anything is not clear.

I will be available for office hours this week in B205 from 12:30 to 4. You can find me their either via Skype or in person. I will be out of town Tuesday through Thursday, so it would not be a god idea to delay working on this.

The third assignment has also been posted, but it may change depending on results from the quizzes.

Updated PDF of Network Design lecture notes PDF

Some students have reported garbled characters in the current version of the Network Design lecture notes PDF.  I have posted a slightly updated draft at:

http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/.dowling/CSC2281S12/Network_Design_and_Implementation_Spring_1984_Jan12.pdf

Comments, corrections and suggestions greatly appreciated.  I will not take down the original notes yet so they are still on the links for the notes from all the web pages.

Information on the project for CSC2281

It is time to tell you more about the project for the course.

As you will discover as you read the material for the course further, there is a complex but reasonable process for designing a network: you identify the various nodes that will want to send traffic to other
nodes and estimate the amount of traffic each node will want to send (the "offered load"). You try to work out a reasonable topology of links connecting those nodes. You try to assign capacities
to those links that will allow that traffic to be handled. You try to optimize those capacities on the basis of a minimal cost for a given delay. Then you perturb the topoogy and try again. The main tool for the topology design is the Ford-Fulkerson max-flow-min-cut algorithm. The main tool for capacity optimization is the Kleinrock approximation. Those two tools are the hard part of the course.

Since the methodology is well-established, you project is primarily one of identifying some reasonable realistic network design problem to which to apply it. The last class that did this decided to all get together and redesign the LIRR. They did pretty well.

Welcome to the blog for CSC2281S12 an online section of Network Design and Queuing Theory at Dowling College being run during Spring 2012 (27 January 2012 -- 14 May 2012).  You will find much more detail about the course at http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/.dowling/CSC2281S12/.  If you are new to the course, the first things you need to do are:

1. Get yourself a computer or netbook with good internet access and a webcam
2. Put Skype onto your computer and send me an email at yaya at bernstein-plus-sons dot com with your skype id, so I can try to send you a contact request
3. Sign up for a Google gmail account so you can start you own blog for this course and your own web page for this course
4. Get your text books