Communication

There are three ways to ask questions:
  • Discord (informal, interactive, great for quick back-and-forth)
  • Moodle forum [ link ] (for longer questions/problems)
  • Email [ address ] (for private communication)

Use Discord or Moodle, if you can! This way your colleagues can benefit from your questions, and you will get faster answers.


Textbook

The 7th international edition of Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach, Kurose &  Ross. The textbook is not strictly necessary, in the sense that we will not examine any material that is not explicitly taught in class or through the homework and labs. However, it does provide a lot of context and interesting details that could deepen one's understanding  of the material.


Lectures

Katerina will give a classic ex-cathedra lecture every Friday, 15h15-17h00, at SG1138. 

Students who cannot attend in person will be able to join remotely via Zoom [ link ].  But please attend in person if you can. Networks may be super exciting, but following a lecture over Zoom is terribly boring...


Labs + homework reviews

Each lecture will be accompanied by a lab-or-homework session, every Wednesday, 15h15-17h00. 
During these sessions, the teaching team will be available on Discord or Zoom (depending on student vote) and also physically present in INF2/INF3. Hence, you have 4 options for doing the labs:
  • Remotely (with online support), on your own computer
  • Remotely (with online support), through vdi.epfl.ch (*)
  • Physically present in INF2, on your own laptop
  • Physically present in INF3, on an INF3 server
Labs and homework will not be graded, but will help you prepare for the exams.

(*) You can also do the labs remotely on an INF3 server: you vpn into the EPFL network and ssh into the target server. However, this is not a great option, because these servers are physically accessible to many students. It is possible that a student turns off or reboots a server while you are working on it. It is also possible that a server is booted in Windows, in which case it does not support ssh.

Exams

  • There will be two written exams: a midterm and a final.
  • Both exams will cover material that was taught in the lectures and through the homework and labs. 
  • All questions will be stated in English, but you will be free to answer in English or in French. 
  • The midterm exam will be open-book and will be conducted online (via Moodle).
  • The final exam will be closed-book and will be conducted in person during the winter exam session. 
  • During the final exam, each of you will be welcome to bring your own "aide-mémoire". This is a document of at most 4 two-sided A4 sheets (=8 one-sided A4 pages). It can be hand- or typewritten. It can be a photocopy. It can contain colors and drawings. The font can be as small as you wish, but you should be able to read it without auxiliary tools (e.g., a magnifying glass).
  • The midterm grade will count toward your overall grade only if you do well
    (see grade computation below).
Quizzes
  • You will have the option of taking up to 4 online quizzes (via Moodle).
  • Each quiz will cover material from two specific lectures.
  • Quiz grades will count toward your final grade only if you do well (see  grade computation below). 
Grade computation
    We will first compute an "exam grade" for each student using the following formula:
            exam grade = max { 0.3 * midterm-exam grade + 0.7 * final-exam grade, final-exam grade }.

    In other words: If you do well at the midterm exam, that will count toward 30% of your exam grade. Otherwise, 100% of your exam grade will come from the final exam.

    The rational is that some students have not had the time to adjust to the course's style by the midterm exam. These students may do significantly better at the final exam than the midterm exam, in which case we count only their final exam.

    Next, we will compute an "overall grade" for each student using the following formula:
            overall grade = max { 0.9 * exam grade + 0.1 * quiz grade, exam grade }.

    In other words: If you do well at the quizzes, that will count toward 10% of your overall grade. Otherwise, 100% of your overall grade will come from your exams.

    Last modified: Saturday, 25 September 2021, 12:01