ECEN 619 – 600/601 Internet Protocols and Modeling
Spring 2025

 

 

 

Instuctor
 

Professor Xi Zhang                      

Office: 331D WERC
Phone: 979-458-1416

Email: xizhang@ece.tamu.edu

 

 

 

Location and Hours

 

Tue & Thur; 07:00PM-8:15PM; ETB 1037

 

 

Office Hours
 

Office Hour:              Tue. & Thur. 04:15PM-05:15PM

Office:                        On-Line by appointment

 

 

Prerequisite:

 

This course is open to all engineering or other disciplinary graduate students who are interested in Internet protocols and modeling. Desirable prerequisites of the course are basic knowledge of Computer Networks and computer programming, or consent of the instructor.

 

 

Course Description:

 

Today's Internet represents a new information technology revolution. This course aims at equipping graduate students with not only a wide spectrum of Internet protocols that make it work, but also the analytical capabilities to evaluate the performance of complex Internet protocols. It will focus on two important, and also closely related, aspects of the Internet protocols -- (1) principles, design, and implementations, and (2) performance modeling and analysis. Specifically, this course will cover the core components of Internet protocols, such as transport (TCP, UDP), network and routing (IP, RIP, OSPF, EGP, BGP-4, etc.). Advanced topics include QoS architectures for the Internet (Diff-Serv, RSVP, MPLS, RTP) and TCP-Friendly Rate-Based Flow Control for Continuous Media (CM); Queuing theory and delay and loss modeling; TCP over wireless networks and Mobile IP; Multicast Delivery: SRM, IGMP, PIM, MBONE; Flow/Error Control for Multimedia Streaming and Data Dissemination; Multicast Flow/Error-Control Signaling Retransmission-Scoping; Channel-coding (RS & LDPC codes) based multicast flow/error control over wireless networks. Complementing the descriptions of Internet protocols, this course will also introduce a number of emerging performance-modeling and analysis techniques to quantitatively characterize the Internet protocols, including the deterministic, stochastic, and optimization-based approaches. The emphasis is on how to draw the tractable mathematical models from the complex Internet protocols. While these analytical techniques are developed for Internet protocols, they are also applicable to evaluating other dynamic systems.

 

 

Course Contents Outline:

 

 

Course Text books:

 

I will use multiple books as references for this course. A partial list of references is listed below. Handouts and classical & recent journal/conferences papers will also be
distributed to serve as course references.
 

    1) “Data networks”, by Dimitri Bertsekas & Robert Gallager, Prentice Hall Publishers, 2nd Edition.
    2) “Communication networks, fundamental concepts and key architectures”, by Leon-Garcia & Widjaja, McGraw Hill Publishers, 2nd Edition.
 

 

 

Lecture Notes:

 

 

Lecturing Notes 1

Lecturing Notes 2

 

Lecturing Notes 3

 

Lecturing Notes 4

 

Lecturing Notes 5

 

Lecturing Notes 6

 

Lecturing Notes 7

 

Lecturing Notes 8

 

Lecturing Notes 9

 

Lecturing Notes 10

 

Lecturing Notes 11

 

Lecturing Notes 12

 

 



 

 

 

Research Papers:

  1. Van Jacobson and M. J. Karels, “Congestion avoidance and control,” ACM SIGCOMM'88: Symposium proceedings on Communications Architectures and Protocols, August 1988.

  2. Kathleen Nichols and Van Jacobson, “Controlling Queue Delay,” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 55, Issue 7, pp. 42-50, July 01, 2012.

  3. D. Chiu and R. Jain, “Analysis of the Increase/Decrease Algorithms for Congestion Avoidance in Computer Networks,” Journal of Computer Networks and ISDN, Vol. 17, No. 1, June 1989, pp. 1-14.

  4. L. Brakmo and L. Peterson, “TCP Vegas: End to End Cogestion Avoidance on a globeal Internet,” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Commmunications (JSAC), Oct, 1995.

  5. Xi Zhang and Kang G. Shin, “Second-Order Rate-Control Based Transport Protocols,” IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP) 2001, pp. 342 - 350.

  6. J.-C. Bolot and A. U. Shankar, “Dynamical behavior of rate-based flow control mechanisms,” ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, vol. 20, no. 2, April 1990, pp. 35-49.

  7. X. Zhang, H.-H. Chen, and M. Guizani, “Second-Order Rate-Control Based Transport Protocols Over Mobile Wireless Networks.” in Proc. WCNC, 2007, pp. 3722-3727.

  8. D. Lapsley and S. Low, “Random Early Marking : an Optimisation Approach to Internet Congestion Control,” IEEE International Conference on Networks 1999. (ICON '99), Sept. 1999, pp. 67- 74.

  9. X. Zhang, K. G. Shin, D. Saha, and D. Kandlur,Scalable Flow Control for Multicast ABR Services in ATM Networks,IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 67--85, February 2002.

  10. D. Lapsley and S. Low, “An optimization approach to ABR control,” in Proc. IEEE ICC 98', Jun 1998, 1500-1504.

  11. S. Floyd and V. Jacobson. “Random Early Detection gateways for congestion avoidance,"  IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 1(4), August 1997.

 

 

 

Homework:

 

 

 

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Policy Statement
 

The following ADA Policy Statement (part of the Policy on Individual Disabling Conditions) was submitted to the University Curriculum Committee by the Department of Student Life. The policy statement was forwarded to the Faculty Senate for information. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal antidiscrimination statute that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities. Among other things, this legislation requires that all students with disabilities be guaranteed a learning environment that provides for reasonable accommodation of their disabilities. If you believe you have a disability requiring an accommodation, please contact the Department of Student Life, Services for Students with Disabilities in Room B118 of Cain Hall or call 845-1637.
 

 

Academic Integrity Statement
 

Aggie Honor Code
“An Aggie does not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do.”

 

Upon accepting admission to Texas A&M University, a student immediately assumes a commitment to uphold the Honor Code, to accept responsibility for learning and to follow the philosophy and rules of the Honor System. Students will be required to state their commitment on examinations, research papers, and other academic work. Ignorance of the rules does not exclude any member of the Texas A&M University community from the requirements or the processes of the Honor System. For additional information please visit: www.tamu.edu/aggiehonor/ On all course work, assignments, and examinations at Texas A&M University, the following Honor Pledge shall be preprinted and signed by the student: “On my honor, as an Aggie, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work.”