Enterprise Networking: Practices and Technologies

This course gives students hands-on experience in the design, configuration and troubleshooting of networks. This course is rooted in a theoretical and technical overview of the field. General understanding of all layers of the networking stack is required. However, the focus is mainly on networking, i.e. how to make networks work and how to keep them working. Thus, routing, switching and services that support networking (e.g. DHCP and DNS) are core topics. Furthermore, the course focuses on large-scale scenarios where networking can be challenging. The course is organised around weekly practical lab sessions and lectures that complement each other. The lectures give the theoretical background while the lab sessions give the necessary hands-on experience in putting theory into practice.

No formal requirements over and above the admission requirements.

This course has a limited number of spaces. A maximum of 22 students will be admitted on a “first come first serve” basis.

The student should have the following outcomes upon completing the course:

Knowledge

Upon successful completion of the course, the student:

• has the advanced knowledge required to make the right design choices when tasked with designing an enterprise-sized or large-scale network
• has advanced knowledge about best practice for configuration of enterprise-sized or large-scale network
• has advanced knowledge about methods of troubleshooting an enterprise-sized or large-scale network

Skills

Upon successful completion of the course, the student:

• has the technical experience required to analyse and design an enterprise-sized or large-scale network
• has hands-on experience in setting up and configuring an enterprise-sized or large- scale network, focusing primarily on routing, switching and services that support networking (e.g. DHCP and DNS)
• masters different approaches to troubleshooting a network, including traffic analysis

General competence

Upon successful completion of the course, the student:

• has a broad overview of networking theory and practice and knows how to put theoretical networking knowledge into practice in an actual network
• is able to analyse and discuss how networks of different types should be designed, configured and maintained.

This course features weekly lectures and lab sessions to provide both theoretical content and hands-on experience. Students work in groups of two and complete assignments. The students supplement the lectures and lab sessions with their own reading. Compulsory assignments are given throughout the semester.

The following required coursework must be approved before the student can take the exam: The student is required to complete at least 9 of the 13 assignments to a satisfactory level. The assignments focus on technical work and are documented in reports. The reports must adequately detail the completed work, and no length requirements apply.

Individual oral exam.

The oral exam cannot be appealed.

No examination support material is allowed.

For the final assessment a grading scale from A to E is used, where A denotes the highest and E the lowest pass grade, and F denotes a fail.

Two internal examiners. External examiner is used periodically.