The final will cover all lecture, homework, and lab material.

Here is a possible priority list for organizing your preparation:

  1. If you have not watched lectures 1-6 at all, watch them now. 
    If you have watched them, even superficially, then go straight to step 2.
  2. If you have not watched lecture 7, lecture 8, and lecture 10, watch them now. If you have, then review them (= go through the slides, flag the ones whose content you don't remember clearly, and watch the corresponding videos).
  3. Do homework 5 and homework 8. The final always has a problem that involves IP prefix allocation + some end-systems exchange messages and you are asked to list the resulting packets (including ARP requests etc).
  4. Do Problem 2 from final 2019 and final 2018. (In final 2018, skip the lab question.)
  5. Review lecture 5 and lecture 6. (In the first video of lecture 6, the title slide says "Lecture 7". That's a typo. Lecture 6 is the second lecture on the transport layer, which focuses on TCP.)
  6. Do homework 4. The final always has a problem on TCP.
  7. Do Problem 4 from final 2019 and final 2018. (In final 2019, skip the lab question.)
  8. If you have not watched lecture 9, watch it now. If you have, then review it.
  9. Do homework 7.
  10. Do Problem 3 from final 2019 and final 2018. (In final 2018, skip the lab question.)
  11. Review lectures 1 to 4.
  12. Do Problem 1 from final 2019 and final 2018. 
  13. Do homework 6.
  14. Look over lab1, lab2, lab3, lab4, lab5, lab6, in this order. 
  15. Do final 2017 and final 2016 from beginning to end.
If you complete all these steps, and you do the homework and exam problems without looking at the solutions, you are perfectly prepared. If you don't have the time to do everything, do as many steps as you can, starting from the top. 

Comments and questions (on Moodle or Discord) always welcome.

Last modified: Tuesday, 22 December 2020, 10:08