Midterm 1 Preparation

As always, the midterm will try to concentrate on key concepts. There will be a mix of straightforward questions (e.g., "What are the two key problems the sliding window protocol addresses?") and ones for which recognizing the key concept to apply to formulate the answer is the primary part of the problem. (See the sample midterm.)

Some questions will be motivated by the assignments. The way I think of those, if you've done the assignments you're prepared to answer the questions (although they might take some thinking) - that is, I don't think you need to go read materials about the topics, beyond what was needed for the assignments.

There will also be questions about the material in the lectures (up through last Friday's lecture) and in the readings in the book. Ideas that I've repeated a hundred times in lecture are likely to come to mind again when I make up midterm questions, but other, more specific information from the reading appear on the midterm as well, even if it has been barely mentioned in lecture: "What is the delay-bandwidth product, and why is it an important concept?" or "What is a virtual circuit?"

Most questions will not be so merely factual as the two examples I just gave. Instead, they're more likely to be along the lines of "Why do both virtual circuits and packet switching exist? Why doesn't one always dominate the other? Give examples."

The parts of the book that might be the source of questions are the readings from the syllabus:

• everything listed as reading for the lectures, up through Section 3.2 (i.e., excluding later sections of Chapter 3)
• we've discussed some very initial parts of Chapter 4, particularly around the concepts behind Figure 4.2. The midterm can cover up through last Friday's lecture material. That doesn't correspond exactly to any consecutive set of pages in the book, but relates to the piece of Chapter 4, up through page 241.

The midterm will not be intended to test your memory for acronyms.

It's closed everything.

My target length to answer the exam is one hour. You'll have the full class period to take it.