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Chapters

This intelligent textbook is organized into 16 chapters covering 338 concepts from the ACM/IEEE CS2023 Networking and Communication knowledge area.

Chapter Overview

  1. Introduction to Networks and Communication - This chapter introduces the foundational vocabulary of networking — the participants in any network (hosts, clients, servers, edges, cores), the physical and logical links that connect them, and the addresses and ports that identify endpoints.
  2. Standards, Data Units, and Encapsulation - This chapter introduces the standards bodies that govern interoperability (IETF, IEEE, ISO, ICANN) and the universal vocabulary of bits, bytes, frames, packets, segments, datagrams, headers, payloads, and trailers.
  3. Network Architecture and Layered Models - This chapter develops the layered architecture that organizes all of networking — the OSI seven-layer reference model, the TCP/IP four/five-layer model, the role of each layer, the end-to-end principle, and addressing scopes (unicast, multicast, broadcast, anycast).
  4. Network Performance and Quality of Service - This chapter builds the measurement vocabulary that the entire course relies on — bandwidth, throughput, goodput, latency components, RTT, jitter, packet loss, MTU, and the bandwidth-delay product.
  5. The Physical Layer - This chapter examines how bits actually cross physical media — analog versus digital signaling, modulation and demodulation, encoding schemes (Manchester, NRZ), symbol and baud rate, channel capacity bounded by Shannon's theorem, transmission media (twisted pair, coax, fiber, wireless), and the impairments (attenuation, noise, interference, bit error rate) that motivate everything above.
  6. Link Layer Fundamentals and Reliable Transfer - This chapter covers reliable transfer over a single link: framing techniques (bit and byte stuffing), error detection (parity, checksum, CRC), forward error correction, and automatic repeat request variants (stop-and-wait, sliding window, Go-Back-N, selective repeat).
  7. Ethernet, Switching, and VLANs - This chapter focuses on the dominant LAN technology: Ethernet frames, hubs, bridges, learning switches, the Spanning Tree Protocol, broadcast and collision domains, VLANs, VLAN tagging (802.1Q), trunk and access ports, and link aggregation.
  8. Wireless and Mobile Networking - This chapter introduces wireless and cellular networking — Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) including access points, SSIDs, BSS/ESS, channels, RTS/CTS, and roaming; Bluetooth; cellular generations (4G LTE, 5G NR); and mobility mechanisms such as Mobile IP, handoff, and link adaptation.
  9. The Network Layer and IP Addressing - This chapter is the core of the Internet's design — the IPv4 and IPv6 datagram services, header formats, address classes and ranges, CIDR, subnetting and supernetting, IPv6 address types and autoconfiguration, IPv4/IPv6 transition mechanisms (dual stack, tunneling, NAT64), control protocols (ICMP, ARP, NDP, ping, traceroute), NAT and PAT, and fragmentation/reassembly.
  10. Routing and Forwarding - This chapter traces the path of a packet through the Internet — the forwarding/routing distinction, forwarding and routing tables, longest-prefix match, static and default routes, distance-vector algorithms (Bellman-Ford, RIP, count-to-infinity, split horizon, poison reverse), link-state algorithms (Dijkstra, OSPF), path-vector routing (BGP, autonomous systems), Internet topology, peering and transit, and multicast/anycast routing.
  11. The Transport Layer - This chapter develops end-to-end delivery — UDP and its datagram service, then TCP from segments and sequence numbers through three-way handshake, connection termination, sliding window, flow control, and congestion control (slow start, congestion avoidance, fast retransmit/recovery, Reno, CUBIC, BBR).
  12. Network Security - This chapter introduces network security primitives in transit — cryptography fundamentals, symmetric and public-key encryption, hash functions, digital signatures, certificate authorities, X.509 certificates, TLS (handshake, cipher suites), IPsec and VPNs, firewalls (stateful), intrusion detection and prevention, common attacks (spoofing, MITM, DDoS, replay, SYN flood, ARP spoofing), defense in depth, and zero-trust architectures.
  13. Application Layer Protocols - This chapter covers the protocols that ride on TCP, UDP, and QUIC: DNS (hierarchy, record types, recursive vs.
  14. Network Programming with Sockets - This chapter teaches students to build networked applications: the Berkeley sockets API, TCP and UDP sockets, socket addresses, the bind/listen/accept/connect lifecycle, send and receive operations, blocking and non-blocking I/O, asynchronous patterns (select, poll, epoll, kqueue), client-server and peer-to-peer architectures, and NAT traversal techniques (STUN, TURN).
  15. Network Operations and Measurement - This chapter covers the practical tooling for running and measuring networks: wire protocol design and versioning, packet capture with Wireshark and tcpdump, throughput measurement with iperf, Linux network namespaces and bridges, traffic impairment with tc netem, network logging, change control, and configuration management.
  16. SDN, NFV, Emerging Topics, and Capstone Projects - The final chapter looks forward — SDN with control-plane and data-plane separation, OpenFlow, controllers, NFV, service meshes, overlay networks and VXLAN, content delivery networks, edge and fog computing, post-quantum cryptography, low-latency and AI-workload networking, cloud VPCs, and hybrid cloud networks.

How to Use This Textbook

Read the chapters in order. Each chapter assumes you have completed all earlier chapters, since concepts build on one another and the dependency graph has been respected throughout. Within a chapter, the concept list is ordered from foundational to advanced, so you can study the concepts top-to-bottom and follow links into the glossary or learning graph for definitions.

Hands-on labs and capstone projects appear toward the end of the book. They draw on every previous chapter, so do not skip ahead — the value of the capstone work depends on the foundation you build in Chapters 1 through 15.

Note: Each chapter index lists the concepts covered and the prerequisite chapters. Make sure to complete prerequisites before moving to advanced chapters.