ECE/CS 438 Communication Networks  
Fall 2012


Instructor: Nitin Vaidya
Office hours: Wednesday 9:30 - 11:00 a.m. or by appointment
Office location: 458 Coordinated Science Lab (CSL)
Phone: 217-265-5414
E-mail: nhv@illinois.edu

Lectures:  MWF 2:00 - 2:50 p.m.
Room 269 Everitt Laboratory

Teaching Assistants:

  • Philbert Lin: prlin2@illinois.edu , office hours: Wednesday 12-2 p.m., Everitt Lab room 330N

  • Shehla Rana: ssrana2@illinois.edu , office hours: Monday 9-11 a.m., Siebel Center room 0207

  • Course handout (see REVISED office hours above)

  • Link to a previous offering of this course

  • Discussion group for the course:
    We are now using Piazza to post announcements and to handle questions. Please add yourself to the CS438 Piazza at https://piazza.com/illinois/fall2012/cs438.
    (the use of the UIUC newsgroup is now discontinued).

  • Regrade requests should be submitted within one week of posting of grades for a homework, quiz, programming assignment, or exam. Regrade requests must be submitted in writing on a separate piece of paper (please do not write the request on your homework, quiz, exam, or programming assignment).

  • Mid-term exam:
    Mid-term exam will be held on October 25, 2012 (Thursday) from 7 p.m. (1 hour 30 minutes duration) in Transportation Building rooms 101 and 103. All material covered in the course, including the homeworks, through October 16, 2012 and associated required readings are included for the mid-term exam. The mid-term exam will be open book-open notes.

    SOLUTIONS for the mid-term exam

  • Quiz:
    A quiz will be held in class on Monday, December 10. This quiz is worth 2% of the final grade. The material included for the quiz consists of queueing disciplines (specifically, FIFO, priority queuing, GPS and PGPS), and the material in Section 8.1 of 5th edition of the textbook -- this section is titled Cryptographic Building Blocks and includes discussion of Ciphers, Symmetric-key ciphers, Public-key ciphers, and Authenticators. The quiz is open-book open-notes. Readings required for the quiz are section 6.2.1 (5th edition) on FIFO, Sections I, II, and III (except the proofs) of the paper by Parekh and Gallagher that was assigned reading for Lectures 34,35 (see Lectures page), and section 8.1 on Cryptographic Building Blocks.

    FORMAT FOR QUESTION 1 ON THE QUIZ: Click here for a file that specifies the format for one of the questions on the Quiz to be held on Monday, December 10. Aside from some crucial details, the rest of the text of that question is provided in the file. Since the duration of the quiz is short, we are providing this text now to save you some time during the quiz.

    SOLUTIONS for the QUIZ (these solutions correspond to the version of the quiz printed on white paper - the other version is very similar)

  • Final examination:
    Final exam will be held during 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. on December 15, 2012 (Saturday) in rooms 260 and 269 in Everitt Laboratory. The final examination will be comprehensive (all material covered in the course, including the homeworks, and associated required readings included). The final examination will be open book-open notes. The final exam schedule is based on the UIUC Final Exam Non-Combined Scheduling Guidelines for Fall 2012. If you have a conflict, please let the instructor know as soon as possible. For the UIUC policy on final examination conflicts, please click here. Please bring a photo ID to the final exam.



Homeworks and Programming Assignments