tip: a course about ip convergence technology

University of Pisa

IP Converging Technologies(TIP)

http://www.di.unipi.it/~augusto/tip

A course of theDept. of Computer Science

TeacherAugusto Ciuffoletti

Framing the course● Convergence is a strategic issue for the development

of an infrastructure and of the services it provides, since it enables the utilization of the same infrastructure for many purposes.

● One of the many instances of convergence centers around IP: the pervasive diffusion of Internet makes this protocol as an ideal point of convergence for many services that are based upon communication

● The course explains why Internet is an appropriate target for convergence, and how applications requiring a guaranteed quality of service can converge onto it.

Background of the course

● The course addresses students pursuing the second cycle degree in Computer Science

● Knowledge of the TCP/IP stack fundamentals are required

● The course does not make use of programming languages

● A reasonable knowledge of technical English is required to read documentation

Purpose of the course● At the end of the course, the student:

– Has a clear understanding of IP Networking

– Understands the limits of the “best effort” attitude in face of applications that require a guaranteed quality of service

– Knows the technologies that have been introduced to overcome such limits

– Appreciates the role of standards in the advancement of a technology

– Has a basic understanding of the Voice over IP technology and of other converging technologies

Program of the Course(part one)

Exploring the Internet:

– Internet routing: we understand the topology of the Internet through the study of routing protocols, both Internal and External to Autonomous Systems (BGP and OSPF resp.)

– Congestion control: congestion is tightly bound to the “best effort” policy that characterizes the Internet. This phenomenon can be to some extent controlled, improving Internet reliability.

Program of the course(part two)

Differentiated traffic management for IP convergence

– Traffic with distinct requirements regarding quality of service can be managed separately

– The Differentiated Services approach. Traffic aggregation and traffic class management. Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)

– The Integrated Services Approach. Flow control and the Reservation Protocol (RSVP).

– ATM as a point of convergence

– IPv6 aspects related with flow control.

Program of the course(part three)

Converging applications (case studies)

– Multimedia in the Internet. Real Time Protocol (RTP) and the Internet Group Membership Protocol (IGMP).

– Browsing from GSM phones. The Wireless Access Protocol (WAP)

– Telephony over IP. The session initiation protocol (SIP)

Extras

● Students are invited to prepare a short seminar about a related topic, in change of a small bonus.

● One or two lectures are given in teleconference (VoIP experiment).

● Not on a regular basis, but a laboratory about routing using emulated networks (thanks to the NETKIT from RomaTre University) have been proposed.

● The course has been given from year 2002-03 until 2009-10.

● The slides of the course (in html) are found in the reference web page:

http://www.di.unipi.it/~augusto/tip/index.html● The course now should be updated with relevant

technologies:

– TDM over IP: ultimate convergence?

– PON: the ideal carrier

– Timing: transversal

“The road goes ever on and on...” (from... ok, you know)

Profile of the teacher

● I am an active researcher in the field of network monitoring, and I covered a leading position on the topic in a EU project, with many published papers and implementations;

● Another topic of interest is clock synchronization, with reference to the NTP and IEEE1588 standards;

● As a teacher, I have given the course in Computer Networks just before creating the TIP (and the companion TQI);

Students feedback

● As a general rule I evaluated the preparation of the students as good. Only in a few cases the preparation was deemed unacceptable.

● The TIP course has never been perceived as “difficult” from the students, however I noticed a progressive diminuition of their preparation.

● Three students decided to prepare a master thesis on related topics under my supervision.