CS435 Final Review

10 pages of notes is allowed, 8.5 by 11 both sides, but the test is closed book and closed computer.

Be prepared for questions on the following:

Physical Layer (How this affects network programming, like effect of latency or bandwidth or reliability)
Link Layer (or Data Link Layer) (Addresses, how this affects programming again)
Network Layer (Internet Layer) (IPv4, IPv6) (only in limited depth, like how IP addresses work or that kind of thing. This is where routing happens.)
Transport Layer (TCP, UDP, more with programming considerations than how they work)
Main topic: Application Layer (servers, clients, network programming in general)
Multithreaded servers and clients (how could a race condition be handled, etc)

Demo topics there might be questions about:

DNS passthrough and how DNS works
GUI need in clients, threading in these, GUI questions will have to be fairly generic
Threading in servers
Flags like MSG_WAITALL, MSG_PEEK, MSG_DONTWAIT
UDP, part of the DNS demo, didn't have homework on it
IPv6, we did a demo on this but no homework again
Anything else that was in a demo

Question Types

Multiple choice. There are 8 of these, on general stuff, worth three points each (24 points total)
Short answer (5 to 10 points) Remember what we talked about in lecture for these, in-class demos, etc.
Programming Questions. Requires coding. You'll have to implement a multithreaded server and a client.

Notes about Specific Questions

Client/Server Programming: There is a question that presents you with a simple protocol for client/server communication, and requires you to implement at least part of one of them. You can use any programming language you like. The protocol is designed to not require a lot of code to parse, but you'll have to be ready for some network programming. The protocol is binary, like LURK. Advice on this: Think simple. It's not a very complicated task. I see a lot of very complicated answers on this type of question, and they're hard to get right under test conditions.