Syllabus

Course and lab overview

• Course and lab intro

Prerequisites

This is a list of exercises that can be used to assess the background required for this subject.

• Exercises on IP addressing

• Exercises on IP static routing and aggregation

• Exercises on Packet Sniffing and Traffic Analysis

LAN Basics

• Introduction to LAN

• Ethernet

• Repeaters and bridges

• Ethernet evolution

• Advanced features on Ethernet networks

Cabling and structured cabling

• Introduction to cabling

• NICs and cabling

Spanning tree

• Spanning Tree

• Rapid Spanning Tree

Additional LAN standards 

• QoS on LAN

• Link Aggregation

• IGMP Snooping

• Link-Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP)

Beyond LANs and network design

• Virtual LANs

• Virtual LANs: Advanced Topics

• Redundancy of the default gateway on LANs

• Dissecting HSRP traffic (auto-learning)

• LAN Design: mixing data-link and network layers

Data centers

• Data centers topologies and architectures

• InfiniBand and RDMA

• Storage Area Networks

• Content Delivery Networks

• Load Balancers

Seminars

• Enrico Venuto, La struttura di rete e datacenter del Politecnico - To be scheduled

Lab assignments

• Preliminary information:

  • Introduction to Cisco Routers

  • Basic IP Routing Configuration on Cisco Routers

• Introduction to the lab and GNS3

• Lab 1: Filtering Database

• Lab 2: Spanning Tree and Link Aggregation

• Lab 3: VLAN Configuration

• Lab 4: Fundamentals of Virtual Networking (optional)

Questions and exercises

• Ethernet Standards

• Data Link Traffic Forwarding

• Spanning Tree

• Virtual LANs

• L2/L3 Network Design

• Closed Answer Questions on Local Area Networks