Computer Science | Grinnell College

This Friday at CS Table, Simon and Jeff will present the information contained in packet headers and lead a continued discussion on network surveillance. We suggest the following reading (as much as you have interest or time for):

• ResNet Guidelines and Policies
• Ellen Nakashima, US seeks ways to wiretap the Internet, Washington Post, Sept 27, 2010.
• Paul Ohm, When Network Neutrality Met Privacy, CACM 53(4):30-32, April 2010.
• Kristina Irion, International Communications Surveillance, CACM 52(2):26-28, Feb 2009.
• TCP Protocol Layers Explained, Dru Lavigne, ONLamp.com, March 14, 2001.
• Capturing TCP Packets, Dru Lavigne, ONLamp.com, March 21, 2001.
• IP Packets Revealed, Dru Lavigne, ONLamp.com, March 28, 2001.

As usual, we'll meet a little after noon in JRC 224A.

Students who are registered for CSC 295: We'll be doing sign-ups for after fall break. Please bring your calendars!

This Friday at CS Table, Dr. Rebelsky and I will be presenting the XKCD comic "Password Reuse".

To add some seriousness to the conversation, please also read

• A. L. Penenberg, Is Google evil?, Mother Jones, October 10, 2006;
• J. Vascellaro, Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults Ahead, Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2010.

As usual, we'll be meeting at noon in JRC 224A. Hope to see you there!

This Friday at CS Table, Isaac and Josh will be leading a discussion about quality of service and network neutrality. The popular press articles are concerned with recent regulatory proposals:

• Nate Anderson, FCC proposes network neutrality rules (and big exemptions), Ars Technica, Oct 22, 2009.
• Declan McCullagh, Court: FCC has no power to regulate Net neutrality, CNET News, April 6, 2010.
• Matthew Lasar, Few neutrals in debate over third way net neutrality plan, Ars Technica, July 19, 2010.

Technical readings from Wikipedia are concerned with existing Internet service models:

• Best Effort Delivery
• Quality of Service

As usual, we meet at noon in JRC 224A. Hope to see you there!

• United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), Understanding Denial-of-Service Attacks, November 4, 2004.
• R. Singel, Twitter, Facebook attacks no surprise to security experts, Wired.com, August 6, 2009.
• R. Singel, Is there rhyme or reason to the attacks on Twitter?, Wired.com, August 6, 2009.
• Domain Name System (Wikipedia).
• ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC), DNS Distributed Denial of Service, March 2006.

Also worth reading, not required: J. Davis, Secret Geek A-Team Hacks Back, Defends Worldwide Web, Wired 16.12, November 24, 2008.
Presenters: Martin & Max

This Friday, Jesse and Shitanshu will be leading a discussion on the SMTP application-level protocol and one of its most popular uses, spam. Please read this article:

• E. Allman, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, the FTC, and Spam, ACM Queue, Oct 2003.

For additional background, also read about SMTP.

As usual, we'll be meeting in JRC 224A at noon. Hope to see you there!

This Friday, Jordan and Alex will be leading a discussion on the Internet Engineering Task Force, the body which governs Internet protocols. It's very different from how you might imagine a standards organization, and Alex and Jordan have some great questions to discuss.

The main article for Friday is

• P. Borsook, How Anarchy Works, Wired 3.10, Oct 1995.

Those who are registered for the course or interested in further technical background should peruse the following Wikipedia articles. While Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, it gives a reasonably accurate overview of many Internet-related topics, and it is cheap.

• Communications Protocol
• Internet Protocol Suite

As usual, we are meeting on Friday at noon in JRC 224A. Hope to see you there!

Welcome back! This semester, CS Table will be conducted together with the 1-credit special topic course CSC 295, Socio-Technical Issues in Computer Networks. We will consider issues from access and net neutrality to censorship and denial of service attacks. Registered students will be expected to lead discussions throughout the semester; all other interested students are welcome to attend and participate in discussions.

We will be meeting in JRC 224A. There is no reading for this Friday. Our agenda:

We'll consider metaphors as a way to consolidate our prior knowledge of how the Internet works (and perhaps learn some new things as well). Registered students will sign up for the first round of presentations.

A schedule for the entire semester is available at http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~davisjan/csc/295/2010F/.

Hope to see you there!