General Notes

In this unit, you should do the following:

• Attend lectures, take notes, ask questions.

• Attend your tutorial/practical, seek feedback from your lecturer on your work.

• Prepare for and strive to do well in the quizzes

• Read appropriate sections of the text, add to your notes and prepare questions for your lecturer/tutor.

• Prepare answers to tutorial questions.

• Work on any assignments that have been released. 

Please note it is to your benefit to attend most of the classes, prepared to participate in discussions, ask and answer questions, and provide perspectives from your own background and workplaces. Resources to assist your learning Digital recordings of lectures are available as Echo360 through iLearn login. These are provided for review material and in case of missing lectures. Recordings should not be relied upon and copyrighted material may be omitted. iLearn is used for out-of-class communication as well as forums where active discussion of issues is encouraged. iLearn can be found at can be found at http://learn.mq.edu.au. You are encouraged to review iLearn weekly and to do background reading before each class.  

Special Consideration

The Special Consideration Policy aims to support students who have been impacted by short-term circumstances or events that are serious, unavoidable and significantly disruptive, and which may affect their performance in assessment. If you experience circumstances or events that affect your ability to complete the assessments in this unit on time, please inform the convenor and submit a Special Consideration request through ask.mq.edu.au.

Written Assessments: If you experience circumstances or events that affect your ability to complete the written assessments in this unit on time, please inform the convenor and submit a Special Consideration request through ask.mq.edu.au.

Note that for workshops,  a Special Consideration should only be applied for if you miss three or more than three of the weekly practical classes.  

Requirements to Pass this unit

In this unit, the final mark will be calculated by combining the marks for all assessment tasks according to the percentage weightings shown in the assessment summary. There are no hurdles in this unit.

To pass the unit, you must obtain an overall total mark of 50% or higher.

You are encouraged to:

• set your personal deadline earlier than the actual one;

• keep backups of all important assessed tasks;.

• make sure no one else picks up your printouts. All work submitted should be readable and well presented.

You should never commit plagiarism in any of your submitted work, including tutorial and practical answers.

Assessment Release Dates

The assignment and lab book specifications will be released by close of business (COB) on Friday, 1st of August (Week 1)..

Assignment Submission Guidelines and Late Submission

Your assignment is to be submitted online using Turnitin.

In-class activities, or scheduled Quiz must be undertaken at the time indicated in the unit guide. Should these activities be missed due to illness or misadventure, students may apply for Special Consideration.

All other assessments must be submitted by 11:55 pm on their due date.

Should these assessments be missed due to illness or misadventure, students should apply for Special Consideration.

Late Assessment Submission Penalty 

From 1 July 2022, Students enrolled in Session based units with written assessments will have the following late penalty applied. Please see https://students.mq.edu.au/study/assessment-exams/assessments for more information. 

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark of the task) will be applied for each day a written report or presentation assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends). After the 7th day, a grade of ‘0’ will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. The submission time for all uploaded assessments is 11:55 pm. A 1-hour grace period will be provided to students who experience a technical concern. For any late submission of time-sensitive tasks, such as scheduled tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, and/or scheduled practical assessments/labs, please apply for Special Consideration.For example, if the assignment is worth 8 marks (of the entire unit) and your submission is late by 19 hours (or 23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds), 0.4 marks (5% of 8 marks) will be deducted. If your submission is late by 24 hours (or 47 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds), 0.8 marks (10% of 8 marks) will be deducted, and so on. 

In this unit, late submissions will be accepted for the following assessment tasks:: 

• Quiz:: NO, unless Special Consideration is granted   
• Assignment:: YES, Standard Late Penalty applies. 
• Lab Book:: YES, Standard Late Penalty appliies.

Methods of Communication

Our primary means of communication will be through your university email and announcements on iLearn. It is crucial to consistently check your university's email for important updates and information related to the course. The teaching staff will not entertain emails that do not originate from university email IDs.

Additionally, significant announcements will be posted on iLearn, a centralized platform for accessing vital details about the course. Should you have any queries or require assistance from the teaching staff, including the unit convenor, you have two communication channels. Firstly, you can post your queries on the iLearn discussion board, providing an interactive space for instructors and peers to engage in discussions. Alternatively, you may send emails to the corresponding addresses of the teaching staff using your university email address for official communication. Through these communication methods, we aim to ensure effective and timely dissemination of information and provide the necessary support throughout the course.

Week 1 classes  

Lectures commence from Week 1.  Workshop sessions commence in Week 2. All classes (lectures and workshops) are on campus.

Each week, students will have:

• One 2-hour Lecture, and 
• One 2-hour workshop.

Assessment Release Dates

The assignment and lab book specifications will be released by close of business (COB) on Friday of Week 1.

Lectures

Lectures commence from Week 1 to Week 13.

On campus lecture sessions will provide an opportunity for the students to ask questions on the topic of the week and to clarify anything that they might not be sure of. Lecture recordings will be made available through Echo360.

Workshops and Lab Book

Workshop sessions commence from Week 2 to Week 11, and includes problem solving and practical hands on sessions. Workshop Sessions give you an opportunity to practice your practical networking skills under the supervision of a TA. Each week, you will be given an exercise to complete. It is important to keep up with these tasks, as they will enhance your understanding of the unit content and support the preparation of your lab book..

Note that while the workshop material is structured against the lecture material, you need to keep in mind that there will not always be a one to one mapping between the practical exercises and the lecture topics. This is because you need some practical sessions to get acquainted to new tools and devices thereby limiting the number of workshop time slots available to experiment with technologies discussed in some lectures.

There will be one 2 hour long workshop session each week starting Week 2 to Week 11.

Lab Book: Students will complete hands-on workshop tasks and submit a report in the form of a lab book. The lab book will be assessed based on overall quality and completeness. It is due on Sunday of Week 12.

Quiz

The quiz serves as a formative assessment designed to evaluate students’ knowledge and understanding of the unit materials accumulated throughout the semester. This assessment helps ensure that students have effectively grasped key concepts before completing the unit. The quiz will be held in the workshop sessions in Week 13. You will need to complete the quiz during the workshop session you are registered in.

Assignment

This is a Problem solving type assessment tasks. The purpose of the problem-solving assignment is to help the students get accustomed to dealing with real world problem situations/issues. It is designed to help students analyse a particular problem and find its best solution.There is no group component to this assignment. This is an individual assignment. Answers will be marked based on technical correctness, completeness, clarity, and relevance..The assignment is submitted through Turnitin and students can see Turnitin similarity reports. Results will be released on iLearn in a timely manner, subject to certain acceptable delays such as accommodating special consideration late assessments. The assignment is due on Sunday - Week 11.

The Recommended Text

• Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1, 6th edition Douglas Comer
• Computer Networks (5th Edition) by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and David J. Wetherall 
• Computer Networks and Internets: Global (6th) Edition by Douglas Comer
• Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach 7th edition by James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross (older editions - 5th and 6th editions can be used as well)
• Request For Comments (RFCs): Series of memoranda encompassing new research, innovations, and methodologies applicable to Internet technologies.
• RFC documents are available to public for free. We will be posting these documents on ilearn as well.

Methods of Communication 

We will communicate with you via your university email and through announcements on iLearn. Queries to convenors can either be placed on the iLearn discussion board or sent to the unit convenor via the contact email on iLearn.

COVID Information 

For the latest information on the University’s response to COVID-19, please refer to the Coronavirus infection page on the Macquarie website: https://www.mq.edu.au/about/coronavirus-faqs. Remember to check this page regularly in case the information and requirements change during semester. If there are any changes to this unit in relation to COVID, these will be communicated via iLearn. 

Tentative Lecture Schedule

Note: We participate that there may be some shifting of material depending on class progress during the semester.

We value student feedback to be able to continually improve the way we offer our units. As such we encourage students to provide constructive feedback via student surveys, to the teaching staff directly, or via the FSE Student Experience & Feedback link in the iLearn page. 

Student feedback from the previous offering of this unit was very positive overall, with students pleased with the clarity around assessment requirements and the level of support from teaching staff. As such, no change to the delivery of the unit is planned, however we will continue to strive to improve the level of support and the level of student engagement.