CST 311 Week 1

Week 1

This week has been great. I've learned a ton of new information already. I'm nervous I won't be able to retain it all for the exams. I didn't make notes while watching the lectures this week, but in the following weeks I'm going to start putting together quick reference sheets. When I took this week's quiz, I found that I had to go back to find information and I had no idea where it was.

This week we learned how the internet is all connected and had a quick overview on how it operates by sendings packets between hosts. We also dove into understanding throughput in a connection and what the delays in sending a packet are.

Delay times for a packet on a network seem to be the most notable information for this week:

d_end-to-end = d_proc + d_queue + d_trans + d_prop

d_proc : This is where the packet is processed. Here, the bits are checked for errors and the output link is determined.
d_queue : Time a packet spends waiting in the output link queue to be put on the output link. This time depends on how busy the router is.
d_trans : L/R, where L is the packet length and R is the link bandwidth. This is the time spent placing the packet onto the output link.
d_prop : d/s, where d is the length of the physical length and s is the propagation speed. This is the time spent on the link itself.