Everyone in CS 440 must sign up for one of the two sections of lab that go along with the lecture (as I'm sure everyone knows already). The laboratory component of the class will consist of two parts: first is the weekly scheduled lab time, where you will have access to the lab facilities, the class teaching assistant, and an organized lab activity; and second is an opportunity to work on the programming assignments that have been given for the class. The intent is that the scheduled lab activity will take between one and one and a half hours, leaving some time for you to work on the programming assignments and discuss problems with the TA.

The following is a brief list of the planned lab activities; it will be filled in as the semester progresses. Each entry has a link to a more complete description of the lab. If a lab has any pre-lab activitiees, they are to be checked off by the TA at the start of lab. You should submit the pre-lab to Anthony via email, using his submission guidelines, before the start of lab..

Lab Exercises

Week	Topic	Pre- Lab?
Sep 6	Introductory network program	N
Sep 13	Retrieving services and experimenting with a POP server	Y
Sep 20	Field Trip to ITC	N
Sep 27	Intro to Network Simulation	Y
Oct 4	Ethernet LAN Simulation	N
Oct 11	Troubleshooting C Problems	N
Oct 18	Switched LAN Simulation	N
Oct 25	Network Design Simulation	N
Nov 1	Ethernet Hubs vs. Switches	N
Nov 8	RIP vs. OSPF	N
Nov 15	Hands-on Networking Hardware Lab - no report due, but attendance will be taken in lab	N
Nov 22	No lab - Thanksgiving
Nov 29	Packet Sniffing, Card Dealer Client Testing	N
Dec 6	Lab final, programming project wrap-up	N

Lab Reports

For each lab, you must submit a brief write-up, mostly to indicate that you actually did the lab exercise. These aren't expected to be too formal, but you will need to type up something and mail it to your TA. And any time you are turning something in, you should make some effort to write it reasonably well and make it look somewhat presentable.

The following is an example report for Lab 5. You don't need to follow this exact ; this should just give you some idea about how you might put together a report. Note that it describes the lab well enough to generally understand what you did, without the reader needing to read the lab assignment. It presents the results and takes a stab at analyzing and explaining them. The screen dumps are labeled, so it's easy to refer to them throughout the report. The report includes a section for conclusions, including any problems encountered while doing the lab. Here are sample write-ups for Lab 7, Lab 8, and Lab 9.

Feel free to use a different layout, but try to include a simlar amount of information (or more).

The lab report is due by the end of the day following the lab (i.e. 11:59 PM on Wednesday or Friday).