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Communications and Billboard
June 10 2008: Laboratory closing
As of Saturday June 21, the equipment and spaces for the
Laboratories will not be available any more. Please, anyone who
still has to perform some final measures or has lost one
lab for any reason complete them within this date.
Please, remember that the pre-correction of the reports
by Alessandro was a privilege for people writing them along the
course. Now Alessandro has other duties and tasks to fulfill so, please
do not send him reports to revise anymore as this was not provided by the
course rules.
June 8 2008:
First corrections of Lab. 1 reports available.
See this file for the numerical results
and come to my office to see the corrections if you want.
Calendar
- Theory: Friday 8.30--10.30 AM room 207
- Theory: Monday 15.30--18.30 room 106 until Feb. 25 (2 weeks)
- Labs: Monday 15.30--18.30 room 106 starting March 10
- Laboratories: given the numbers (students, APs, Laptops)
we must split in two
groups (A and B), working in alternate weeks.
Alessandro will explain the details the first day (March 10).
We have reserved additional 4 hours of the labs on Wednesday afternoon to
allow you completing the tasks. Additional info will come soon.
General Info & Program
The course is held jointly by Dr. Alessandro Villani and myself.
I will cover mostly the theoric/descriptive parts, while Alessandro
will take care of the labs.
The program is described on the official Faculty page.
Labs are mandatory, part of the exam will be based on Lab reports.
Credits, Computer Science and Engineering
As you probably know this course is offered both to
Telecommunication Engineering and to Computer Science students.
The number of credits is 6, but for TLC students the name of the course is
"Wireless Networks".
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Teaching Material
We don't have any "official textbook." Here are the printouts of the
slides I use to follow a predefined course while teaching. They are by
no means a textbook and I will spend maybe half a lesson on a single
slide and ... surf over the next 10 in 10 minutes. They are intended to
help you in scribbling notes, not to substitute the lessons.
- Introduction, general notions and reharsal of known concepts
- 802.11 Wireless LANs: PHY, MAC and access procedures.
- 802.11e: Service differentation and QoS support in WLANs.
March 31: New versione with many added slides and minor corrections
- WLAN Management (802.11f and capwap): organizing large HotSpots,
micro-mobility and handovers.
- Ad-Hoc Networks, Meshes, WSN, ZigBee, Bluetooth.
Labs
- Lab 1: Configuring an AP and measuring some
of its performance characteristics.
- Lab 2: Working with Ad-Hoc mode: performance comparison with
infrastructured systems.
- Lab 3: Wireshark and "on-air" sniffing.
- Lab 4: WEP, WAP and criptographyc protection.
- Examples of goos (not perfect) reports form your
past years collegues. Copying them will not make a
good report for this year!!
They are in Italian, but I don't have really good examples in
English; however what count are the structure and results, not
language details.
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Bibliography and additional material
There is an enormous
number of publications covering wireless networks or specific aspects thereof.
Besides the obvious consideration that it is impossible to know (or even list!) them
all, many of them, specially concerning wireless LANs have to
problem to be either very imprecise (read: full of errors!), or very generic
(little information to be found), or very badly written so they are difficult to read.
The three problems are combined randomly in different books
I prefer to indicate here a few handbooks that can be useful and
web sites that are easier (and cheaper!) to consult. However, for
web sites I cannot guarrantee that all the information is correct.
- 802.11 Handbook: A designer's Companion , Bob O'Hara and Al Petrick,
IEEE Press, 1999, is a reasonable booklet explaining the standard (1999 version)
in accessible language. Since the authors participated in the standard definition
it is reasonably correct and accurate. The authors maintain a
site
where additional (very little!) material is posted including a useful list of acronims.
- O'Reilly's books are generally very approximate, Italian translations are old and
inaccurate, but they are cheap and normally available very early
on the market.
- The Wi-Fi Alliance
Web site
provides useful information from the economic and marketing point of view.
The Wi-Fi Alliance is a nonprofit international association whose aim if
fostering 802.11 market by certifying the interoperability of WLAN products
based on IEEE 802.11 standars
- Those interested in science and technical history
can start from this page
and browse its links; however, informations there a divulgative and unchecked, thus try to
accept them with critical spirit and double check them whenever seems strange or not
convincing.
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Exams
The exam comprises the Lab reports and an oral part discussing theory
and the simple problems of performance and dimensioning we discuss
in class. The two parts have approximately the same weight.
Each Lab report
will be graded 1-4, thus the labs part will sum up to 4-16. Failing to
deliver lab reports does not allow taking the oral part.
Each Lab report can be finished and delivered (e-mail with attached PDF)
in one of two ways:
-
Immediately: this means within two weeks from the Lab day.
The report will quickly checked by Alessandro to give hints on how to improve it
or re-do it alltogether if it is highly unsatisfactory. In other words
you have a chnce to improve it before the final delivery.
-
Delayed: this means delivering 5-10 days before the oral,
which must be reserved via e-mail, in this case the delivered reports arethe final ones.
The oral will make the rest of the exam.
We strongly encourage the lab groups to coordinate and try to have the
exam all together. This greatly simplifies management,
teaches you group and cooperative working, and also (normally)
increases the quality of your oral exam, since joint study
fosters discussions.
The oral part covers all material exposed in class, thus reading
the slides is normally not sufficient to pass the exam, because in
class much more is discussed and explaind than the simple
bullets and schemes of the slides. Discussion and clarifications can
also be asked around the Lab reports.
The oral part can be taken at any time when you're ready,
taking an appointment at least 1 week before via e-mail.
Remember to register for the exam on ESSE3 in any case, otherwise we can't register.
The oral part can be taken only after the lab reports are completed.
No exception can be done on this for any reason
Next Exams Sessions
- Tuesday June 10
- Wednesday July 23
- Thursday September 4
Please remember to register for the exam BEFORE
taking the oral exam , otherwise we can't register the grade.
The dates above are just the beurochratical date, you can take the oral
any time making an appointment with me a few days (4-5 at least) in advance.
Notice that I will not be available in Trento from June 27 to July 15.
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Consulence
Additional clarifications, explanations, datails, etc. can be obtained
at any time during lesson or soon after.
Single/group consulence outside official lessons can be arranged
in my office with a simple mail; I avoid "official and fixed" receiving
hours because they are a waste of time for everybody.
Simple doubts can be submitted (and solved) via e-mail.
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White Papers
are technical documents not strictly related to the products that vendors
publish to foster their specific technical point of view of some
specific areas, e.g., network integration, WLAN evolution, etc.
They are written to look as written by an independend observer, though they're
obviously not, since they reflect the "technical vision" of the firm
and its marketing strategy.
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