IMT 546  -  'Data Communications & Networks'  etc.- Spring 2025

I.   THE REQUIREMENTS AND DELIVERABLES FOR THIS GRADED CLASS, AND THE FACTORS USED IN GRADING, ARE AS FOLLOWS.  

    A.  There is a required "Course Presentation" report which will count for 70% of your final grade.   

• It will be based on a (salient) topic you choose which has been approved by me.  

• The presentation should be > 20 and < 35 minutes long (not counting any Q&A)

• Its final submission form will be a Powerpoint slide deck but 

• you will also deliver the Course Presentation in class during one of the final 3 or (depending on # of students) 4 course meetings. 

Grading of the final presentations will be solely on the quality of the subject area content, (not on presentation skills, or fancy graphics or animations)  

Everyone's final "Course Presentation" is due in my ronj@uw.edu email inbox no later than 9pm on the last Thursday (i.e. June 12th) of finals week

    B.  The other 30% of your grade will be based upon constructive class participation demonstrating:

• that you have read (or viewed) and understood the assigned materials, 

• listened to your colleagues in class, and 

• provided constructive feedback (as would be expected in a professional team environment)

  • One component of “constructive class participation” will be making weekly brief - < 5 minute – “work in progress” reports in class:

    • on materials you have consulted during the past week as part of your work on your Course Presentation[ or 

    • on a related issue or question which you have a question about and would like input from ‘teammates’.

    • Students will be called upon at random during one class session per week to make these reports

II.  CALENDAR OF DELIVERABLES

• Weekly  - For each class meeting: 

  • • do all of the assigned readings &/or viewings &/or tutorials, 

    • participate in class discussions

    •  (starting on April 17) be prepared to provide a < 5 minute ‘work in progress’ report during class

• By 9pm April 2 Respond to the Poll/Survey which I sent out just before our 1st class meeting.  I need this information to start to finalize course content!

  • Be sure to give me your input on any topics that you would like to see covered during the quarter!  

  • By Wednesday April 16 (before 9pm), at the latest, send me an email sketching or outlining TWO topics you are considering for your Course Presentation. I will send you feedback. 

  • By Monday April 21 (before 9pm) – at the latest - Choose and get my approval of your Course Presentation topic. See below for a description of the Course Presentation, and examples of appropriate topics.

  • Starting with our Thursday April 24 class be prepared to do a < 5 minute “work in progress report” in class

  • May 29, June 3, or June 6, as will be randomly selected during class, present your Course Presentation.  

  • By Thursday June 12 (by 9pm) Turn in your final Course Presentation in Powerpoint format to me via email sent to ronj@uw.edu   [Note that if it is a large file, it likely will be sent as a link to me]. 

III. GRADING:  

Students enrolled in IMT 546 will be evaluated with respect to iSchool expectations of graduate students. 

For more information on grading policy please see section V. below.

IV.  ABOUT THE COURSE PRESENTATION:  The required final course presentation will count for approximately 70% of the course grade. The topic needs to be approved in advance by me. The Final Course Presentation needs to cover your topic well, and demonstrate cogent thinking and analysis,  in a no less than 20 minute, and no more than 35 minute Powerpoint presentation.

The presentation should be of a nature suitable for presenting your findings and/or recommendations and/or analysis of the chosen topic to an audience of fellow professionals. As such, it should not be overly formal, but as its final slide should be a 'bibliography' citing sources used.

While it must be a topic directly related to computer/telecommunications/sensor or other such 'physical' networks, it can address any of a very wide range of technical, policy, strategy, ethical, regulatory, standards, tools, security, outsourcing or other issues or subjects. 

It can be a survey of an issue or topic that is intended to inform others of a relevant technology, or approach to an issue etc.  

It can be an analysis of the efficacy or a technology, a policy, a regulatory regimen, a technology strategy or architecture etc.

It can be an opinion piece, but if it is, then it must also be well researched, well evidenced ,and also fairly/factually present at least a sketch of the, or an, opposing opinion. E.g. students have explored and taken sides on  the issues such as:  whether public distributed blockchains will be able to scale to high transaction rates,  how to best allocate communications spectrum, whether broadband should be treated as a basic human right even if that comes at the expense of other pressing needs  like clean water and electricity;  whether network neutrality is good or bad or both etc the (arguable); the need (or not) for municipal networks; the importance of user/community readiness & education in programs to address the digital divide.;  etc.    

It can be a report on the relative effectiveness of a project, a program (e.g., eRate in the USA), regulations (e.g. pole attachment regulations and fees), or a policy, or a technology (e.g. the effectiveness and limits of residential broadband internet over telco twisted pair technologies), or a network related standard etc.  It can be an explanation of a well formulated project. E.g., a student came up with a design with budgetary cost numbers for a library network that split the public patron network, from the private library internal network. It does not need to be original research, but it can be. 

It can be an technical analysis; e.g. of the issues involved in updating software and/or data throughout a network of sensors or other networked devices; or the network and computational latency inherent in distributed, public and/or private  blockchains 

It can propose a new use case for a network based app. or network sourced data etc.  E.g. a few decades ago a UW student formulated a project to use the network to 'crawl' websites (and that turned out to be an excellent idea that worked out well for Google and others :-)

In any case, whatever the topic and presentation is: 

it must be approved in advance 

it must provide evidence/facts (even - maybe especially - if it is an opinion piece);

it can not do violence to facts (or people); 

it must be clear, coherent and communicate well to the audience, which you should assume to be a group of knowledgeable technology professionals, or perhaps CTOs,  who are not experts on your specific topic .

Here are a few  examples of topics that have been successfully done and could be done again with more current information. 

• Survey of the state of the art in networked implanted and ingested medical devices/instruments. 

• Overview of the software in networks and/or cell phones and/or wifi sites and/or other location etc sensors that compromise privacy. 

• Overview of the needs for home network device compatibility issues and the Connectivity Standards Alliance 

• Monetizing fitness tracker data

• Analysis of the network as a limiting factor in public blockchain, 'distributed ledger' applications

• an account of the status of two projects to provide Wi-Fi access beyond library walls to a larger community. 

• Limitations of the Matters standard for IoT 

• The challenges of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites in meeting the needs of consumer and/or business network users

• A survey/overview of sources of geolocation data that would be useful for mining for various business decision or other uses

• Using RFID for smart packaging

• A presentation of security issues relevant to using an Amazon AWS cloud for hosting a health care application

• Proposed which level requirements/specs.  for a project to develop a blockchain approach to ensuring internet addresses are properly documented and authorised by internet address owners.

• Report on the status of, and prospects for, 2 different approaches to a municipal network.  

• Networked Smart watches as sources of medical information 

• Tradeoffs of 5g vs WiFi for entertainment venues.

• Use of open LTE technology to provide broadband to users who are members of a tribe in a mountainous rural area

• Requirements for post quantum public key encryption approaches.

• a model of providing realtime cross country and/or alpine ski conditions based on networked grooming machines and sensors

• a presentation, and evaluation of,  a specific smart city project. 

• an explication of and argument for (or against)  following Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) practices.  

• Vehicle to Vehicle Network Standards - Possiblities & Challenges

• Survey of current funding opportunities for providing broadband in underserved rural areas. 

• Main barriers to providing broadband to underserved rural communities

• Network technologies for remote environmental sensors

• a survey of the opportunities and challenges of 'open  LTE' . 

• Should Internet Access be a Human Right? Why and at what cost?

• an overview of the security challenges in networked IoT

• What "Infinite Jest" teaches us about the internet

• Smart Electrical Panels & Appliances

• an analysis of a prospective agricultural IoT product. 

• a presentation on the difficulties of deploying fiber optic networks in East Africa. 

•  a presentation on cultural issues and prohibitions regarding the adoption of smart phone technologies and the internet in an area of India. 

• a report comparing broadband deployment in the USA vs South Korea and the Netherlands

• Bar codes and RFIDs in networked marketing.

• a report on the role of network technologies as an accelerant in surveillance regimens 

• a report (by a student with strong CS & economics backgrounds) sketching a potential game theory model of network peering aomg ISPs and CDNs

• Networked sensors in supply chain management

• RFID vs Nearfield (NFC) vs QR codes for smart distribution management.

• Optimizing vehicle traffic flow with network sensors and data

• Network challenges in Cloud architectures 

• A case of network redlining

• 'Fog' or 'Mist' perimeter compute/data models & networks

• Agricultural applications of network technologies 

• Ultra-Low power networking technologies for sensors. 

• 'Body Area Networks' of medical  biomechanical, or other sensors etc.

• BYOD /CYOD

• Net Security  - e.g. Zero Trust models

• Examples of using network derived data in retail customer interactions.

• How networks are used to grab and reinforce your attention.

• Spectrum allocation - What should the priorities be?

• Digital Divide – Definitions of broadband and their consequences

• Using Blockchain to track and ID parts in airplane manufacturing

• How moving to cloud based services changes an enterprises network security needs.

• What is the internet doing to us?! Individually, metlally, collectively, culturally . . .

• Network related 'Standards Wars'

Etc.

So overall there is a very broad range of possible topics. I strongly suggest you pursue one that is of interest to you. 

V. GRADING POLICY:  This class will use the Standard UW Grading system.

General grading information for the University of Washington is available here. The iSchool has adopted its own criteria for grading graduate courses. The grading criteria used by the iSchool for graduate courses are available here.

Your written work will be graded based on its clarity, organization, balance, amount of pertinent detail included, depth and clarity of evaluative and analytical comments, and preparation. It will also be graded on the extent to which a good understanding of the material presented in the course is shown and on the extent to which directions are followed. If evaluative or analytical comments are required, they should be supported by factual evidence, either from readings or other documents. Other aspects of individual assignments may also be included in the grading.

Written work that shows a lack of understanding of subject matter, is unclear or poorly organized, contains few or irrelevant details, does not follow directions, contains little or unsubstantiated evaluative commentary, or is poorly written, prepared (e.g. typos, grammatical errors), or documented will receive low grades.

Class participation and constructive and collegial interaction will also be a component of grading in this course.

Late assignments are not accepted unless submitted to the professor no more than 24 hours after the due date. A late assignment will incur an automatic .5 deduction for its grade. If there are any extenuating circumstances, please notify the professor BEFORE the day that the assignment is due.

Students are encouraged to take drafts of their writing assignments to the Odegaard Writing and Research Center for assistance. Information on scheduling an appointment can be found here.

VI. EVALUATION OF STUDENT WORK:  You may expect to receive comments on and evaluations of assignments and submitted work in a timely fashion. 

VII. COURSE EVALUATION: The end-of-quarter course evaluations will be provided.  You will have opportunity to evaluate the course and your work in the course. Please do it (!), as it is one of the few mechanisms I have for improving the course. Thank you!

VIII.   IMPORTANT NOTICES 

The following paragraphs discussing academic integrity, copyright and privacy outline matters governing student conduct in the iSchool and the University of Washington. They apply to all assignments and communications in this course!

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY:  The essence of academic life revolves around respect not only for the ideas of others, but also their rights to those ideas and their promulgation. It is therefore essential that all of us engaged in the life of the mind take the utmost care that the ideas and expressions of ideas of other people always be appropriately handled, and, where necessary, cited. For writing assignments, when ideas or materials of others are used, they must be cited. The format is not that important as long as it is consistent, the source material can be located and the citation can be verified. In any situation, if you have a question, please feel free to ask the instructor or teaching assistant. Such attention to ideas and acknowledgment of their sources is central not only to academic life, but life in general.

Please acquaint yourself with the University of Washington's resources on academic honesty.

COPYRIGHT:   All of the expressions of ideas in this class that are fixed in any tangible medium such as digital and physical documents are protected by copyright law as embodied in title 17 of the United States Code. These expressions include the work product of both: (1) your student colleagues (e.g., any assignments published here in the course environment or statements committed to text in a discussion forum); and, (2)your instructors (e.g., the syllabus, assignments, reading lists, and lectures). Within the constraints of "fair use," you may download or copy slides, recordings or notes for your personal intellectual use in support of your education here in the iSchool. All of these examples are copyrighted expressions, and fair use by you does not include further distribution by any means of copying, performance or presentation beyond the circle of your student colleagues in this class. If you have any questions regarding whether a use to which you wish to put one of these expressions violates the creator's copyright interests, please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.

PRIVACY:  To support an academic environment of rigorous discussion and open expression of personal thoughts and feelings, we, as members of the academic community, must be committed to the inviolate right of privacy of our student and instructor colleagues. As a result, we must forego sharing personally identifiable information about any member of our community including information about the ideas they express, their families, life styles and their political and social affiliations. If you have any questions regarding whether a disclosure you wish to make regarding anyone in this course or in the iSchool community violates that person's privacy interests, please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.

Knowing violations of these principles of academic conduct, privacy or copyright may result in University disciplinary action under the Student Code of Conduct.

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES:    To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disabled Student Services: 448 Schmitz, 206-543-8924 (V/TTY). If you have a letter from DSS indicating that you have a disability which requires academic accommodations, please present the letter to the instructor so you can discuss the accommodations you might need in the class.

Academic accommodations due to disability will not be made unless the student has a letter from DSS specifying the type and nature of accommodations needed.

STUDENT CODE OF CONDUCT:   Good student conduct is important for maintaining a healthy course environment. Please familiarize yourself with the University of Washington's Student Code of Conduct, here.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:  The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.

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