Abstract: We will start from reviewing the general principles and challenges of networking. We will then focus on layer 2 and especially on switching and connection-oriented networks (e.g., MPLS). We will also briefly overview wireless networking, cryptography and security, multimedia networking, and emerging areas such as cloud and fog computing, softwarization and virtualization, Quality of Service, AI and data science in networking, Internet of Things, and future cellular systems 5G and beyond.

Time permitting, we will touch on networking services; signaling for setting up networking services, such as SIP and IMS; networking architectures for providing Quality of Service (QoS) for networking services, such as MPLS, DiffServ and RAC; signaling protocols for setting up QoS connections in the transport stratum, such as LDP and RSVP-TE.

In the last part of the course, we will introduce the design and performance evaluation of network services, service level agreements, quantitative performance evaluation techniques, and we will place special emphasis on simulation and network traffic modeling techniques.