Networing Week 6 - A well directed graph

I'd like to start by saying that I really like graphs. So this week's focus on routing algorithms was a lot of fun. Some of the parts got a little bit crazy as far as the different styles of routing algorithms presented in different forms. There was a variety of videos provided in different styles that made the information approachable though. This is really the ideal way for me to learn and I spend most of my free time time that isn't spent gardening studying videos to learn other topics.

There was also an interesting change with one of the assignments where it looked like you could take it as many times as you'd like to get more points. I didn't do that though. What I did do was go back and fix my obvious mistakes like selecting 4 bytes when I meant 2. So the option to fix dumb errors was nice. Those kinds of simple mistakes can leave you with a 60% instead of 80% so I appreciate that option.

Networking Week 5 - Hop scotch to India

This week was about the network layer which meant hopping around the Internet watching where things go one hop at a time. Videos and reading showed what goes on inside routers as packets move from one node to the next to accomplish a goal. Hands on work with traceroute was interesting because it showed information about each node in the network as information went from here to India as an example.  

Something I thought was interesting was how badly the first traceroute I ran to india failed. Then changing to doing a different type of traceroute caused things to appear nicely. It seems like the default should be the one that works more? That's OK though it worked out in the end and I got to see what kind of delays were between here and India. Everything was going nicely until after my packets left Los Angeles. I suppose that is why I don't see many people from India in the games I play! They would get allocated to servers closer to their homes of course.

Networking Week 3 - Don't miss the transport

This week was all about the transport layer.

UDP and TCP protocols live on the transport layer. If you are running a game and need to send player information updates between the client and server as fast as possible you're going to use UDP. TCP on the other hand is more reliable and bounces back and forth between two hosts to ensure the data is sent properly. So this layer is what you can use to build higher level protocols for your applications.

I haven't done a lot of programming at this layer so I enjoyed the labs this week going more in depth examining packets used for DNS. It is interesting to see how data moves through the transport layer to implement these higher level protocols. 

Networking Week 2 - What's that protocol?

In this week we covered a variety of fundamental application protocols. Each protocol showed an example of how you can use networking to accomplish different goals. HTTP as it compared to FTP shows the use of multiple ports versus a single port during an applications life cycle. Another difference that came up was using a p2p network topology compared to a client-server relationship. Using that kind of organization can let you increase survivability with off grid mesh networks which interests me. Also I don't like moving information through unnecessary nodes.

One of my favorite p2p products is gotenna. It just seems like a great idea for people to have their own cell phone base stations that create a network like that.

goTenna (goTenna Inc.) is a Brooklyn, New York-based startup that designs and develops technologies for off-grid and decentralized communications. goTenna devices pair with smartphones and, through intelligent mobile ad hoc networking protocols, enable users to send texts and share locations on a peer-to-peer basis, foregoing the need for centralized communications infrastructure of any kind.[1] - wikipedia

I don't have one of these products, but they do seem like an interesting way to augment peoples cell phone capabilities.

As for the networking assignments this week they helped continue the process of dividing the path information takes from one place to the next into visible pieces. I really like to be able to see things physically so packaging up packets and moving them through different layers is attractive to me. It will be nice to have a very solid view of information moving across space at different levels of abstraction eventually.

Networking Week 1 - What the ARP

This week I gained a better understanding of how packets are moved across the network and appear on each devices network adapter. The most interesting part for me was watching our Roku's keep sending ARP requests on the network. It's nice to know that regardless of changes to the network our Roku's will work hard to find their way to the internet and the netflix servers. The videos, reading, and exercises also helped to detach network protocols from networking hardware for me. Around my desk I've got all different kinds of radios and networking devices that use wires, 915mhz, and 2.4ghz for Zigbee, Lora, Wifi, CAN, etc so it is important for me to understand the different layers involved in networks.

As someone who took half this class before my expectations were pretty clear for content coverage. This does seem like an area you can play around with for a while and keep learning new things so I was not disappointed by watching the same videos and absorbing new information from them. There were unexpected aspects regarding the format for homework submission but I liked those changes. Having everything use the quiz submission form seems like a good way to keep things organized within the CMS instead of having us upload files with all questions answered.