During the last two years, we have experimented with a different organization of the first networking course at UCLouvain. Most networking courses use either:

• a bottom-up approach starting from the physical layer and then going up the stack
• a top-down approach starting from the application layer and then going down the stack

The previous editions of Computer Networking: Principles, Protocols and Practice used a mixed approach, starting from the principles and then exploring the Internet protocols. Our students expressed some frustration with this approach as it forced them to wait several weeks before studying real protocols.

During the last two years, we adopted a different approach which seems to work pretty well with our students. The course is now divided into two main parts:

• the host part describes the protocols that are used by hosts, assuming the network as a black box
• the network part describes the protocols used by routers and switches

We have prepared a set of slides that follow this approach and work well with our students.

• the first course starts with an introduction and a description of the applications
• the second course continues our exploration of the applications and explains the security principles
• The third course explains the principles of reliable transfer with go-back-n and selective repeat.
• The fourth course explains the principles of reliable transport and the basics of TCP.
• The fifth course describes modern TCP implementations.
• The sixth course explains the principles of QUIC, which is now widely deployed and provides a modern and secure transport protocol.
• The seventh course describes the network layer on the hosts and the distance vector and link-state routing protocols.
• The eighth course describes the intra and interdomain routing protocols.
• The nineth course describes how BGP is used inside ISP networks.
• The tenth course describes how congestion is handled by transport protocols and how routers can control the traffic that passes through them.
• The eleventh and twelveth courses describe Ethernet and WiFi and discuss how IP operates in LANs.

The next step is now to convert this organization into an ebook which is reusable by various universities. In the meantime, the slides are already available through the above links.

Suggestions and comments on this approach are more than welcome !