CST 361S Week 1

CST 361S Week 1

This week I was able to complete 4 hours at my service learning partners site. I was able to build a PC for a visually impaired individual. I ran into a bit of a problem with the first PC as it would not properly communicate with the DVD ROM or any DVD ROM installed. Upon troubleshooting it was finally discovered that the problem was with an outdated chipset for the motherboard. Since this was a PC intended for the visually impaired, Magic Screen Modification software from Freedom Scientific was used as the primary aid for the recipient of the PC. I was able to take pictures of the work site. So far I have logged 22.5 hours of service learning. In class an interesting book regarding equality was examined. The book was called Privilege, Power, and Difference. I found it to be a good read and conforming to what I believe we should strive for as a society. I also have come up with an idea to tie in with my service learning that could be a spark to my capstone project. It involves building an application for the blind using AWS Lex. I will need to do more research to see if this is a viable project.

CST 311 Week 8

CST 311 Week 8

I have learned a great deal in the field of computer networks with my only background being setting up my own personal home network with secured WPA2 access. Even with all of the knowledge, I feel like I have just scratched the surface of this topic. I look forward to diving deeper into the book when I have time and incorporate what I have learned into future applications. This past 8 weeks have been both exhausting and enlightening.

CST 311 Week 7

CST 311 Week 7

This week had a lot of information to take in. We moved onto studying the link layer. I found myself taking the most notes on this section as I was very unfamiliar with the content. Link layer services, multiple access links, and error detection and correction were discussed. The various MAC protocols were then explored. Finally LANs and switches were explored within the ARP protocol. We then moved on to security in computer networks. The basics of security were discussed. I found cryptography to be fascinating as we explored from basic substitution ciphers up to the Advanced Encryption Standard. It was neat to see how AES is so much more secure than DES. Finally message integrity, digital signatures, and end point authentication were explored.

CST 311 Week 6

CST 311 Week 6

This week was insightfull as I got to learn about the alorithms behind routing. I found reading about the network layer to be the most fascinating as I like to learn how things work. We learned about the link state algorithm and distance vector algorithm. To learn how routers actually manage routing was fascinating. I also learned that although these algorithms are usefull, they do not scale to the millions of host on the internet. For this reason, the Border Gateway Protocol is implemented. The differences between, unicast, broadcast, multicast and anycast were explored. Also the differences between IPv6 and IPv4 were explored. I liked the refresher on converting binary to hexidecimal by using digit weights of 8 4 2 1. Finally, Internet Protocol Security was also explored.

CST 311 Week 5

CST 311 Week 5

This week was all about the Network Layer of the Internet Protocol stack. The concepts of routing and forwarding were discussed and contrasted. I learned about a router's forwarding table and how it uses the longest prefix matching rule to determine the link interface from a packet's destination IP address. We then delved deep into the inner workings of a router. IP datagrams and IP addressing were also analyzed in depth. The concepts of how DHCP is used to obtain a host IP address were explored and analyzed during our lab in which we were able to see the DHCP messages that were used for a host to obtain an IP address. The DHCP discover, offer, request, and ACK are part of this 4 way process for a host to obtain an IP address. Finally NAT or Network Address Translation was explored in how it allows for an internal network to hide details of its network with the outside world. NAT is also controversial.

This week was filled with a ton of  new information and I feel I will have to revisit it again thoroughly before our next final.

CST 311 Week 4

CST 311 Week 4

         This week was a short week in which we got to focus on studying for our midterm. We learned about socket programming with UDP and TCP and the key differences in programming for the two protocols. With UDP socket programming, no handshaking is necessary to establish a connection. The sender explicitly attachesIP destination address and port number to each packet. The receiver extracts sender IP address and port number from the received packet. Wtih TCP programming the client must contact the server. The server must have a "welcome" door that welcomes a clients contact. When a client is contacted, TCP server creates a new server socket to communicate with that particular client. Python code was explored in how client and server applications are coded for UDP and TCP socket programming.

CST 311 Week 3

CST 311 Week 3

I found this week to be challenging as it was a lot of new material. I found the videos to help tremendously as the reading was a lot to take in and it was good to learn from a different form. This week we learned all about the transport layer of networks. We learned about the specifics of how UDP and TCP transport data on the transport layer. The concepts of multiplexing and demultiplexing were examined. We also learned how TCP and even UDP implement reliable data transfer along the transport layer.