Communications

Lessons on Fridays May 18, 25 and June 1

• Friday May 18 - 4 hours: 8,30 room 205, 14.30 room 204
• Friday May 25: NO LESSONS
• Friday June 1 - 4 hours: 8,30 room 205, 14.30 room 204

Calendar

• Theory: Friday 8.30--10.30 AM room 205
  
• Laboratories: given the numbers (students, APs, Laptops) we must split in two groups.
  The lists of the members of the two groups is available here.
  Alessandro will explain the details the first day (March 9). We have in the end reserved five hours of lab per week, three hours dedicated to "teaching" and 2 hours dedicated to additional experiments "on-your-own" to prepare the lab notes, which are part of the final exam.
  • Friday 14.30--17.30 room 204 "teaching labs"
    Alternating weeks starting march 9: Group 1
    Alternating weeks starting march 17: Group 2
    
  • Thursday 8.30--10.30 room 204 "on-your-own labs". Free access for everybody, but precedence to the group that had the teaching lab the week before.

Taking APs and Material for "Experience on-your-own"

Given requests from many of you to have additional access to measures and devices, we have agreed the following procedure to allow anlyone to have additional time to study the Labs and collect good-quality data to write `super' lab-reports.

• Go to the "Presidio" of the III Padiglione IRST (ground floor near the main entrance) where the Lab material is stored, and find out a 1/2 day (8.30--13.30 or 13.30--18.30) when the material you need is available (use your own Laptop, because these cannot be lent).
• Reserve it and find a room where to work that day.
• Collect the material the 1/2 day you reserved it and sign a piece of paper (an id document is required) where you take responsibility of it.
• Do all your experiments.
• Bring the material back in time. Please, be aware that smashing the material, losing it, or failing to bring it back in time, may lead to have to re-buy it on your funds.
• We strongly encourage coordination among groups (e.g., 3 groups take the 3 AP the same 1/2 day, and have a single configuration of the server laptop) to make the best use of resources.

General Info & Program

The course is held jointly by Dr. Alessandro Villani and myself. I will cover mostly the theoric/descriptive parts, while Alessandro will take care of the labs.

The program is described on the official Faculty page. Labs are mandatory, part of the exam will be based on Lab reports.

Credits, Computer Science and Engineering

As you probably know this course is offered both to Telecommunication Engineering and to Computer Science students. The number of credits is 6, but for TLC students the name of the course is "Wireless Networks".

Teaching Material

We don't have any "official textbook." Here are the printouts of the slides I use to follow a predefined course while teaching. They are by no means a textbook and I will spend maybe half a lesson on a single slide and ... surf over the next 10 in 10 minutes. They are intended to help you in scribbling notes, not to substitute the lessons.

• Introduction, general notions and reharsal of known concepts
  • PDF - slide format
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts
• 802.11 Wireless LANs: PHY, MAC and access procedures.
  • PDF - slide format
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts
• 802.11e Service Differentiation and QoS in WLANs
  • PDF - slide format
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts
• EDCA differentiation and HCCA Scheduling
  • PDF - slide format
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts
  • Bianchi paper @ Globecom 2004
  • Larcheri paper @ WONS 2006
  • The Standard Revealed by one of your collegues (in Italian)
  • Another performance study on EDCA
• AP Management, IAPP protocols: 802.11f and capwap New Version: updated May 2
  • PDF - slide format New Version
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts New Version
• Ad-Hoc, PAN, Sensors and Mesh Networking
  • PDF - slide format
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts
• Wireless Mesh Networks: applications, examples, and routing
  • PDF - slide format
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts

Labs

Here are the suport slides of the Labs, please visit and check frequently also the Laboratories Section where information about groups, timetable, use of the lab materiales, and the preparation of the Lab reports are posted and maintained.

• Configuring Avaya and Cisco APs
  • PDF - slide format
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts
• IPERF use & Lab Report hints
  • PDF - slide format
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts
• The linux live distribution used for packet analysis in teh lab can be found here
• Wireshark and Sniffing in Air and Radius Management
  • PDF-1 - slide format
  • PDF-1 - 3Xpage handouts
  • PDF-2 - slide format
  • PDF-2 - 3Xpage handouts
• Ad-hoc Networking with 802.11
  • PDF - slide format
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts
• WEP Analysis and cracking
  • PDF - slide format
  • PDF - 3Xpage handouts

Bibliography and additional material

There is an enormous number of publications covering wireless networks or specific aspects thereof.
Besides the obvious consideration that it is impossible to know (or even list!) them all, many of them, specially concerning wireless LANs have to problem to be either very imprecise (read: full of errors!), or very generic (little information to be found), or very badly written so they are difficult to read. The three problems are combined randomly in different books

I prefer to indicate here a few handbooks that can be useful and web sites that are easier (and cheaper!) to consult. However, for web sites I cannot guarrantee that all the information is correct.

• 802.11 Handbook: A designer's Companion , Bob O'Hara and Al Petrick, IEEE Press, 1999, is a reasonable booklet explaining the standard (1999 version) in accessible language. Since the authors participated in the standard definition it is reasonably correct and accurate. The authors maintain a site where additional (very little!) material is posted including a useful list of acronims.
• O'Reilly's books are generally very approximate, Italian translations are old and inaccurate, but they are cheap and normally available very early on the market.
• The Wi-Fi Alliance Web site provides useful information from the economic and marketing point of view. The Wi-Fi Alliance is a nonprofit international association whose aim if fostering 802.11 market by certifying the interoperability of WLAN products based on IEEE 802.11 standars
• Those interested in science and technical history can start from this page and browse its links; however, informations there a divulgative and unchecked, thus try to accept them with critical spirit and double check them whenever seems strange or not convincing.

Exams

The exam comprises the Lab reports and an oral part discussing theory and the simple problems of performance and dimensioning we discuss in class. The two parts have approximately the same weight.

Each Lab report will be graded 1-4, thus the labs part will sum up to 4-16. Failing to reach "10" with Lab reports means that the exam is failed. Each Lab report can be finished and delivered (e-mail with attached PDF) in one of two ways:

• Immediately: this means a date set by Prof. Villani for each Lab, normally two weeks after you started the Lab (so delivery is staggered for group 1 and 2). The report will be corrected in 1-2 weeks and, if you are not satisfied with the result, you can re-do it and deliver it delayed.

• Delayed: this means delivering 5-10 days before the oral, which must be reserved via e-mail.

The oral will make the rest of the exam. We strongly encourage the lab groups to coordinate and try to have the exam all together. This greatly simplifies management, teaches you group and cooperative working, and also (normally) increases the quality of your oral exam, since joint study fosters discussions.
The oral part covers all material exposed in class, thus reading the slides is normally not sufficient to pass the aexam, because in class much more is discussed and explaind than the simple bullets and schemes of the slides. Discussion and clarifications can also be asked around the Lab reports.

The oral part can be taken at any time when you're ready, taking an appointment at least 1 week before via e-mail.
Remember to register for the exam on ESSE3 in any case, otherwise we can't register.
The oral part can be taken only after the lab reports are completed. No exception can be done on this for any reason

Next Exams Sessions

• June 4
• July 16
• August 29

Consulence

Additional clarifications, explanations, datails, etc. can be obtained at any time during lesson or soon after.
Single/group consulence outside official lessons can be arranged in my office with a simple mail; I avoid "official and fixed" receiving hours because they are a waste of time for everybody.
Simple doubts can be submitted (and solved) via e-mail.

White Papers are technical documents not strictly related to the products that vendors publish to foster their specific technical point of view of some specific areas, e.g., network integration, WLAN evolution, etc.
They are written to look as written by an independend observer, though they're obviously not, since they reflect the "technical vision" of the firm and its marketing strategy.