Networking With Xinu

Overview

Having students develop networking aspects with their own, or a provided, Xinu operating system is one of the potential tracks for a professor that is Teaching With Xinu.

A networking course incorporating Embedded Xinu allows students to build networking functionality into Embedded Xinu over the period of the course. Courses may vary in starting point. Some may begin with a core release of Embedded Xinu, having students implement an Ethernet driver and develop the entire network stack; others may chose to utilize an Embedded Xinu release with the Ethernet driver provided, and have students concentrate on implementing specific protocols within 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.

Course Outcomes

Course development can parallel learning objectives and topics associated with many Communication and Networking courses. [1]

Topics

• History of networking.
• Overview of the specializations within net-centric computing.
• Network standards.
• ISO 7-layer reference model
• Circuit switching and packet switching
• Streams and datagrams
• Concepts and services for specific network layers.
• Protocol and application overview/implementation.
• Overview of network security.

Learning Objectives

• Discuss the evolution of early networks and the Internet.
• Explain the hierarchical, layered structure of network architecture.
• Identify and explain the development of important network standards.
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different types of switching.
• Demonstrate how a packet traverses the Internet.
• Implement a simple network using devices running the Embedded Xinu operating system.
• Discuss and explain the reasoning for network security.

Potential Course Structure

The students will use a base Embedded Xinu release with an Ethernet driver; this kernel can be professor provided or student built in previous courses. All assignments provided below (after the first one) are intended for groups of two or three students.

Optionally, with each new assignment professors may provide students with a proper implementation of the previous assignment. This allows students to concentrate on implementing the current assignment and avoid distractions caused by implementation blunders in previous assignments. Alternatively, students can utilizing their same code base throughout the semester, learning the importance of correcting prior mistakes.

Course Outline

Week			Topics				Assignments
01			History of networking and the Internet & specializations of net-centric computing				Networking Standards
02			Networking standards & 7-layer ISO model				Packet Demultiplexing
03			Ethernet & Address Resolution Protocol				Implementing ARP
04			Internet Protocol				Implementing IP & ICMP
05			Internet Protocol and Internet Control Message Protocol
06			Internet Packet Traversal, Security Concerns for IP & ARP				IP, ICMP and ARP Applications
07			Datagrams - UDP				UDP Development and Implementation
08			Datagrams - UDP, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
09			Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, Streams - TCP				DHCP Development and Implementation
10			Streams - TCP
11			Security Concerns for UDP, TCP				TCP Development and Implementation
12			Interaction Protocols for Networked Devices
13			Wireless Networking
14			Network Based Application Development				Network Based Applications
15			Networking Future

Student Outcomes from Completion of Course Assignments

Upon completion of all assignments the student should have a grasp of the networking architecture that he or she implemented over the whole course. The student should be able to answer questions about all implemented protocols as well as general questions about other non-implemented protocols. The student should also be able to understand the complexities of their implementation. Given the full implementation of the networking architecture the student should be able to pin-point locations in the architecture where optimization is possible and the difficulty involved.

In addition, students that completed all the assignments should have a grasp of devices, user interaction and driver/OS interaction within Embedded Xinu. Other operating system concepts, including threads, memory management, interprocess communication and synchronization, are reinforced through the use of Embedded Xinu.

Books

• Currently this course structure has no suggested books.

References

[1] Course topics and learning objectives have been adapted from the ACM's Computing Curricula 2001 Computer Science.

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This work funded in part by NSF grant DUE-CCLI-0737476.