Data Networks

Hey folks,

first of all, our statistics show that 117 of you are eligible to take the exam, but we have only 71 who have registered and submitted the consent - so please do that asap! so we can schedule an exam slot for you.

Also a reminder about the course evaluation: if you want that the course will get better for future students, please tell us what we should improve.
You can find the links to the surveys there: https://inet-teaching.mpi-inf.mpg.de/dn_21/news/view/28 the deadline for that is July 15.

Now, a detailed list of points of what we expect from you, what you can expect from us and generally how we conduct the exams.

First, please prepare the following way ahead of the exam:
1) register yourself to the exam;
2) submit your declaration of consent;
3) ensure that "Zoom" works on your Hardware;
4) ensure that your microphone works and that you are audible;
5) ensure that your camera works and that you are visible;
6) ensure that you can move your camera such that the lecturer can verify that you are the only person in the room.

At the time of your exam, please follow the steps outlined below:
1) enter the Zoom session at least ten minutes before your exam slot;
2) choose a username that is somewhat related to your actual name;
3) wait for the examiner to move you from the Zoom session's lobby to the actual examination room;
4) provide us with your identity by either showing us your student id or your identity card;
5) reaffirm (verbally) that you provide us your consent to conduct your oral exam online;
6) affirm that your physical and psychical conditions permit you to participate in the exam;
7) prove to us that there is no second person in the room and that you do not have access to any auxiliary means by panning your camera around your room.

Each exam starts with two questions (from different topics) randomly chosen from a large pool of different questions; thus, every oral exam is unique, and the chance that you encounter similar tasks as your fellow students is minimal. Notably, those two questions only provide a starting point for the exam---during the exam you may have to answer questions for more than two topics. If you feel more confident when you can take notes, please feel free to enter the exam with a pencil and an empty sheet of paper---please tell us that you do so at the beginning of the exam. The entire exam, including all formalities, takes 30 minutes, which leaves around 20 minutes for the actual question and answer part. If you run late, you will effectively lose time to convince us that you know the content and it will be harder to receive a good grade.

At the end of the exam, please follow the steps outlined below:
1) the examiner will move you into a break-out room and they will discuss your performance and decide on a grade;
2) wait for the examiner to move you back into the exam room; the examiner will tell you your grade;
3) after you received your grading (only for the oral exam itself, i.e., without applying any possible bonus) from the examiner, please leave the Zoom session.

After your exam, we will notify the examination office about your final grade (including the possible assignment bonus).

Hey,

just a quick reminder, as several of you did one but not both tasks:

please do not forget to also register for the exam in HISPOS, when you submit the consent form.

If you are an erasmus student or your study program does not support HISPOS: write us a mail (inet-teaching@lists.mpi-inf.mpg.de)!

Thanks!

Hello, It's me!

I am, once again, asking you for your submission solving support.

It's the final countdown* the final assignment and even though we have yet to publish the points for as10, 109 of you have already passed the admission requirement - nice!

For you and also everyone else: please sign the consent form!
We need it to assign you an exam slot and the earlier we can do that, the earlier you can plan ahead as well.
 

Now, without further ado: the great, the magnificent, the one and only: assignment number twelve.

Join me**, in solving it until: Friday, July 9th at 11:59 am CEST.

I know that you know, but I like to send you, one last time, to the Materials page!
 

And lastly, plain and simple: assignment eleven is due tomorrow: Friday, July 2nd, 11:59 am CEST.

Cheers

* Now you have the song stuck in your head, you are welcome :P
** I actually did solve it myself!

Good news everyone,

the lecture period slowly comes to an end and before we will judge your performance once again* in the oral exams, 
you have the chance to judge us!

The Qualis-Team prepared two evaluation surveys (in english), one for the lecture and one for the tutorials, 
and we would kindly ask you, if you have a few minutes to spare, to fill them out.

The survey is anonymous, so don't hold back - but, since we were not yet replaced by teaching-robots, we do still have feelings ;)

The lecture survey is here: https://qualis.uni-saarland.de/eva/?l=129689&p=3ctv4l
The tutorial survey is here: https://qualis.uni-saarland.de/eva/?l=1296891&p=mskcxt

The deadline to fill them out is July 15.

Cheers!

* we of course still have to correct assignments and we will upload assignment 12 tomorrow, but including that made the sentence too clunky.

Dear Students,

im order for us to assign you an exam slot, you must declare your consent to participate in an online oral examination.

We uploaded a form in German and English. 
Please Note: only the German version is officially binding; therefore, submissions of the English version are not allowed and will be ignored.

Fill in the information about yourself (section 1 - Student information), carefully read the 'Notes' section, and provide us with your signature. 

Please fill out the form as soon as possible!
Again: without the signed form, we can not assign you an exam slot.

The submission deadline is Sunday, July 11th, 2021, 23:59 CEST and the respective submission can be done in the same interface as your regular assignment submissions under the heading ''Oral Exam: Declaration of Consent''.

If you did not provide your written consent before the deadline and you did not unregister from the exam in time, you will automatically fail the exam.

Some more hints:

Only fill in section 1, we will fill in section 2!

To provide us with your signature, you have 3 different options:
1) print, sign, scan the document, and save it as pdf
2) sign it with a digital pen (e.g. using a tablet)
3) sign it using a very clear, high-quality photo of your signature and insert it into the pdf

It is not enough to write your name with a digital font!

Cheers

Hello there,

We will conduct the oral exams between July 28th, 2021, and August 18th, 2021. 
You can already (un-)register for the exam on your own in HISPOS/LSF and you can do so until July 21st end-of-day.

Oral exams will be conducted virtually (expect zoom) and will take approximately 30 minutes.
Each student will get a calendar invitation with their designated exam slot.
Due to the high number of oral exams, slot changes are not allowed except for the following reasons:

1) Due to your timezone, the scheduled oral exam would take place before 8 am or after 8 pm.
2) You have an exam that overlaps with the scheduled exam.
Note: this rule does not apply for another exam on the same day which does not overlap with your oral exam with us.
3) You have a medical certificate.
4) There are unforeseen and important circumstances that temporarily do not allow you to participate in the exam.

In any of such cases, we expect you to write us an email with detailed information on why we should change your examination slot until three days before your examination.The decision on whether we provide you with a new slot lies on our end.

Finally, you will have to provide us with a written consent that we are allowed to conduct the exam virtually.
If you registered for the exam and we do not receive your written consent before 8 am on the day of your exam, you will automatically fail the exam—we will make the form available during this week in a separate news post.

How do you do, fellow students?

This week we present you with assignment number eleven for your question solving pleasure.

We can offer you this exceptional piece of assignment for one week, and one week only - afterwards it will be gone!
So decide early, after Friday, July 2nd at 11:59 am CEST it will be too late.
Call now! I mean, go to the Materials page!

We are happy to see that almost all groups are still submitting! 
For all of you the usual reminder: Assignment ten is due tomorrow: Friday, June 25, 11:59 am CEST.

Cheers

--

Hey folks,

you are almost done, just a few more assignments to go and an oral exam (in the next days we will post details about it here).

Here is assignment number ten. 
It and its accompanying material is online on the Materials page.
Due date is, as always, in a week: Friday, June 25 at 11:59 am CEST.

Assignment nine is due tomorrow: Friday, June 18, 11:59 am CEST.

Cheers

Hey folks,

today we present you the latest and greatest of our weekly assignments.

and we call it the ninth assignment. 
It and its accompanying material is online on the Materials page and you get at least seven days, or until: Friday, June 18 at 11:59 am CEST to solve it.

Sadly, you have to part with the old assignment number eight tomorrow, precisely at Friday, June 11, 11:59 am CEST but once you start working on the new one, you wont miss the old.

Cheers

Hello everyone, 

We want to give you a small hint/clarification about Assignment 8, question 3. As some of you might have already noticed, the domain name www.cdu.edu.au  does not map to IP address 138.80.10.69 anymore. We do not have control over the university's infrastructure, and the IP to domain mapping might change again. Nevertheless, you can still use the IP address mentioned in the assignment or use the latest IP address by resolving the domain. Regardless of which IP you use, you will still be able to achieve the full points. 

Best

Hey folks,

you know the drill:
the eighth assignment is online on the Materials page and is due next week: Friday, June 11 at 11:59 am CEST.

Please also make sure to not miss the deadline of the seventh assignment, which is due tomorrow (Friday, June 04, 11:59 am CEST).

Cheers

Hey everyone,

The seventh assignment is online on the Materials page and is again due next week: Friday, June 04 at 11:59 am CEST.

Today, the release was a bit later than usual, as the IMC (Internet Measurement Conference) paper deadline was today as well.

We are sorry for any inconveniences, but I want to note that the official worksheet release is supposed to be on Friday (you have one week to solve each assignment) - we release the sheet a day early so that you can already take an early look and prepare questions for the tutorial on the following day.
This also allows us to implicitly compensate for holidays that would otherwise reduce your time to solve the assignments.

Lastly, like every week, please also make sure to not miss the deadline of the sixth assignment, which is due tomorrow (Friday, May 28, 11:59 am CEST).

Hey everyone,

The sixth assignment is online on the Materials page and is again due next week: Friday, May 28 at 11:59 am CEST.

Like every week, please also make sure to not miss the deadline of the fifth assignment, which is due tomorrow (Friday, May 21, 11:59 am CEST).

Hey everyone,

The fifth assignment is online on the Materials page and is due next week: Friday, May 21 at 11:59 am CEST.

Please also make sure to not miss the deadline of the fourth assignment, which is due tomorrow (Friday, May 14, 11:59 am CEST).

Dear Students,

The fourth assignment is online on the Materials page and is due in a week: Friday, May 14 at 11:59 am CEST.
For this assignment you, again, have to download additional material from the Homework Material section of the Materials page and
from a link on the assignment sheet itself.

Notes:
Please wait with questions until after the next lecture Q&A as the content from there is covering topics of the assignment.
If anything is unclear afterwards, feel free to ask in the tutorial, the forum or on discord.

Please also make sure to not miss the deadline of the third assignment, which is due tomorrow (Friday, May 7, 11:59 am CEST).

Hey everyone,

we noticed that a few of you submit their solutions in handwriting.

This makes the lifes of our tutors unnecessarily harder as they have to decipher what you have written.

Thus, we will no longer accept handwritten solutions, starting from assignment 4.

It is also in your best interest, as we can not grade solutions which we simply can not read.
 

Thanks!

Dear Students,

The third assignment is online on the Materials page and is, as usual, due in a week: Friday, May 7 at 11:59 am CEST.
For this assignment you also have to download additional material from the Homework Material section of the Materials page.

Notes:
Make sure to start early, as this assignment will take more time than the previous ones!

Please also make sure to not miss the deadline for the second assignment, which is due tomorrow (Friday, April 30, 11:59 am CEST).
 

Dear Students,

The second assignment is online in the Materials section and is again due in a week: Friday, April 30 at 11:59 am CEST.

Important:
Starting from this second assignment you have to be in a group of two students.
Any submission made by a single person will be capped at 5 points max, i.e.,
regardless of how many points you could have achieved with your solution, we will only give you at most 5 points for that assignment.

So please find a group partner using the forum, discord or if you absolutely can't find anybody: send us a mail!

Please also make sure to not miss the deadline for the first assignment, which is due tomorrow (Friday, April 23, 11:59 am CEST).

Hello everyone,

please check the submission page and re-upload your solution in case it is not there anymore.
 

Unfortunately there was a hiccup in the CMS that deleted the submission entry for the first assignment.
We are currently investigating to find out what has caused this to prevent such a failure from happening again.

Luckily, we are still far away from the first deadline but in case you have already submitted, please verify that your submission is there.
 

Sorry for any inconveniences.

Dear Students,

You can find the Zoom links for the tutorial sessions on the main page.
You can join whichever tutorial you like.

During the tutorial sessions, please only unmute yourself to ask a question.
For the remainder of the time, please stay muted and disable your video.
When you join the sessions you are muted and your video is disabled.

To submit as a group, you first have to create or join a group via the CMS Teams section.
When one member of your group submits while being in a team, the other can see the solution and we can map both of you.
We ask you to also put in both your names in the solution pdf as a fail-safe.

You can update your solution before the deadline as often as you want, and either of you can (re-)submit the solution.
We will only grade the latest version of your team, regardless of who of you submitted it.
 

Dear Students,

The first assignment is now online in the Materials section of the course CMS and is due next Friday, April 23 at 11:59 am CEST.

As stated in the Assignments section, you will solve twelve assignments throughout the semester.
Assignments are submitted in groups of two students.
We will only enforce this rule starting from the second assignment to give you time to find a group partner.
We encourage you to find a group partner early and already welcome group submissions for the first assignment.

Use the CMS for your submission and hand in one pdf with your solution per group.
Please clearly note your (and your group partners) name and Matrikel number on the top of your pdf.

As some of you already did, you can use the forum or our Discord server to find group members.
You can write a mail, as a last resort, to the mailing list (inet-teaching@lists.mpi-inf.mpg.de) if you can not find a group partner. 
We will gather those requests and assign you a partner.

The exam admission depends on getting at least 50 percent of the theoretically achievable points.
When achieving more than 60 percent (75 percent) of all points, a bonus of +0.3 (+0.7) will be applied to your final grade.
The exam must be passed without the grading bonus.

You can attend any tutorial session regardless of the session that your partner attends.
Submissions are not strictly mapped to tutors, i.e., your group's assignments will likely be graded by a different tutor every week.

Dear Students,

Since remote collaboration can be challenging, we provide you with a free text and voice chat.
You are able to join the Data Networks 2021 Discord server via the following link. 

https://discord.gg/MJBrhxjG6C

Discord allows you to stay completely anonymous or to set up an account and use it from all of your devices simultaneously.
To join anonymously via the in-browser app, click on the above link and enter a temporary user name. If Discord asks you to claim your account, click outside of the box.

Before you can use the server, you have to read and accept the server guidelines by reacting to the post, i.e., clicking the thumbs-up below the post.

As mentioned in the guidelines, we will monitor the Discord server on a best-effort basis, i.e., it is more a place for you to collaborate than it is another way of contacting us, but we will stick around and, as time permits, help with unanswered questions.

Joining the Discord server is not mandatory. We will only post information to the Discord server that is available via the news section or the course forum—you will not miss any information if you do not join the Discord server.

Dear Students,

Similar to last year's iteration, this Data Networks course will be held entirely online and will conclude with an online oral exam.
The first lecture (about organizational matters) is already available here:

https://inet-teaching.mpi-inf.mpg.de/videos/DataNetworks2021/

Please watch the lecture before joining our first Q&A on Tuesday, April 13 at 4 p.m. CEST via the following Zoom link: 

https://zoom.us/j/97254790472

Dear students,

If you plan to enroll in both "Hands-On Networking" and "Data Networks" courses, there are few regulations that you have to take into consideration: 

(1) You are _not_ allowed to use both courses as compulsory elective lectures / (Wahlpflicht) Vorlesungen.

(2) You are allowed to use "Data Networks" as a compulsory elective lecture/ (Wahlpflicht) Vorlesung while keeping "Hands-On Networking" as either a seminar, a practical course / Praktika, or as an elective module. Hence, you would be able to collect all 15 Credit / ECTS points offered by both courses.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at inet-teaching@lists.mpi-inf.mpg.de