Networking With Xinu

Overview

Having students build their own Xinu is one of the potential tracks presented for a professor that is Teaching With Xinu.

A networking course incorporating Embedded Xinu can have students build a networking functionality into Embedded Xinu over the period of the course. Courses may vary in starting point; some choosing to use a core Embedded Xinu release and having students build the entire network stack and ethernet driver. While others may choose an Embedded Xinu release with the ethernet driver available so that the students can concentrate on other parts of the network stack. Network stack implementation assignments for students can parallel various networking lectures that traverse the stack over the course of the semester, terminating in the students implementing an application that uses the developed network stack.

Potential Course Structure

An course using the below course outline or something similar will introduce students to some fundamental and advanced concepts of operating systems combined with the development in a resource constrained environment.

Course Outline

Week			Topics				Assignments
01			C (basics) and OS Structures, Processes				C Basics
02			C (functions, control flow) and Processes
03			C (pointers, arrays, structs) and Threads				C Structs and Pointers
04			CPU Scheduling				Synchronous Serial Driver
05			CPU Scheduling
06			Process Synchronization				Context Switch and Non-Preemptive Scheduling
07			Deadlocks				Priority Scheduling and Process Termination
08			Main Memory and Virtual Memory
09			File System Interface				Preemption and Synchronization
10			File System Implementation
11			Mass-Storage Structure				Delta Queues
12			I/O Systems				Heap Memory
13			Protection, Security and Distributed System Structures				Asynchronous Device Driver
14			Distributed System Structures
15			Distributed File Systems				Ultra-Tiny File System