Instructor: Dr. Richard J. Nieporent

This course provides a detailed examination of wired and wireless Local Area Network (LAN) and Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) architecture, the technology used for the design of LAN and MANs and the methods used for implementing LAN and MAN-based enterprise internetworks. The topology, transmission media, and transmission properties of LANs and MANs are described; and the IEEE 802 standards that are the basis for current LAN and MAN products, are presented. The basic IEEE physical and data link layer LAN protocols and the IEEE protocols for high speed LANs and MANs are analyzed in detail. The internetworking of LANs to local and long haul networks is examined. The high speed Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet LAN standards and the 10 Gigabit Ethernet and the ring-based Distributed Queue Dual Bus (DQDB) and Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) MAN standards are examined. New and emerging wireless LAN and MAN standards are analyzed. The 802.11 WiFi, and the 802.15 Bluetooth and Zigbee standards are reviewed. The 802.16 wirelessMAN (WiMAX) and the 802.16e mobile wirelessMAN standards are presented. Topics include Manchester, Differential Manchester, NRZI, 4B/5B, MLT3, 5B6B, 8B6T, OFDM and OFDMA encoding techniques; bus, star, and ring topologies; optical fiber, coaxial cable, and twisted wire media; baseband, broadband LANs and VLANs; bridges, routers, switches and the spanning tree and source routing algorithms.

Fall 2007

Course Information


Course Administration Course Objective Schedule Course Books Instructor

Viewgraphs, notes, homeworks and solutions. A Valid User Account Required


Computer Network Information

  • Magazines
  • Standards Organizations
    • IEEE - The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) standards organization responsible for the development of IEEE 802.X LAN standards

    • IETF - The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the standards organization responsible for the development of TCP/IP standards

      • RFCs - The complete set of Internet standards documents

      • IANA - All of the numbers and parameters that have been assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority such as port numbers, Ethertypes, IP protocol numbers, etc.

    • Gigabit Ethernet Alliance - Consortium of organizations developing the next generation high speed LAN

    • Fibre Channel Association - Consortium of organizations interested in the development of Fibre Channel networks

    • ANSI X3T11 Fibre Channel committee -The US standards organization for Fibre Channel

    • ATM Forum - Consortium of organizations interested in the development of ATM networks and LAN Emulation (LANE)

    • ISO - The International Standards Institute (ISO) is the standards organization responsible for the development of OSI standards

    • ITU-T - The International Telecommunication Union Telecommuniction Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is the standards organization responsible for the development of X (data communications) and I (ISDN) standards

    • ETSI - The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ITU-T) develops standards for the European community

    • ANSI - The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is the US representative to ISO that is responsible for the US contribution to the development of OSI standards

    • Frame Relay Forum - Consortium of organizations interested in the development of Frame Relay networks

    • SMDS Interest Group - Consortium of organizations interested in the development of SMDS networks

    • The World Wide Web Consortium - Consortium of organizations developing standards for the World Wide Web (WWW)

    • The Network Management Forum - Consortium of organizations developing network management standards for the Internet


  • Miscellaneous Information
    • Dictionary - Dictionary of Data Communications Terminology

    • EMAIL

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