This is a note for the Southeast University course “Communication Networks and Technologies” taught by Prof. Wang. In this post I will summerize the key points of the course and provide some references for further study.

Overview of the Course

Organization of the Course

The whole manuscript of the course is divided into 10 chapters, which is organized as follows:

• Concepts and Theories
  1. Overview of Communication Networks
  2. Basic Principles of Communication
  3. Network Theories
• Technologies and Applications
  1. Circuit Switching
  2. (Datagram) Packet Switching
  3. (Virtual) Packet Switching
  4. MPLS (Broadband IP)
  5. Transport Networks
  6. Access Networks
  7. Wireless Networks

How to Learn

The course has a huge amount of content compared to other similiar courses. Furthermore, the professor tend to teach some advanced techniques not only in the Communication Networks and Technologies course but also in other courses. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the course syllabus and read the textbook thoroughly.

Chapter 1: Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the course and some big ideas of communication networks. So it’s better skipping them for reviewing.

Let’s move on to practical things, the history of communication networks. There are four main stages listed below, with their main features:

1. Telephone Networks
2. Computer Networks: Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs) with bad transmitting performance.
3. Radio and Television Networks: Open Circuit Broadcasting (OCB)
4. Wireless and Mobile Networks

Title Background Source: メルティランドナイトメア
“It all ends with you.”