Network Programming and Client-Server Programming

Birla Institute Of Technology And Science–Pilani (BITS–Pilani) via Coursera

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Paid Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Paid Certificate Available
Duration & workload

3 days 11 hours 34 minutes
Sessions

On-Demand
Subtitles

English

Found in

Overview

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Master the foundational principles and advanced techniques of network programming and client-server architectures with this comprehensive, hands-on course designed for aspiring systems programmers and backend developers. You'll learn to build robust networked applications using socket programming with UDP, TCP, and SCTP protocols, while exploring inter-process communication mechanisms including signals, pipes, message queues, and shared memory. The course progresses from fundamental network concepts and layered architectures to advanced topics in distributed systems, remote procedure calls (RPC), and scalable server design patterns. Through practical implementation exercises, you'll develop real-world client-server applications including Telnet, FTP, and HTTP servers, while mastering performance optimization techniques for concurrent and preforked server architectures. You'll gain expertise in I/O models, asynchronous programming, network debugging tools like tcpdump and Wireshark, and distributed application frameworks. Whether you're preparing for roles in backend development, cloud computing, microservices architecture, or systems engineering, this course equips you with essential skills to design, implement, and optimize networked applications that power modern distributed systems and enterprise infrastructure.

Syllabus

Overview of Computer Networks

In this module, you will learn the basics of computer networks and their architecture, the founding principle of the Internet and its architecture, addressing schemes at the data link layer (i.e, MAC address), network layer (i.e., IPv4 address), and transport layer (i.e., port numbers), and finally, you will have your first program that has the ability to communicate over a network.

Inter-Process Communication

In this module, you will learn the concept of process and its representations, requirements and mechanisms of interprocess communications, the use of signal, pipe, message queue, shared memory for interprocess communication, the concept of synchronisation, and the use of semaphores for process synchronisation.

Network Programming

In this module, your will learn BSD networking and hosts in the networks, testing connections between hosts and presence of hosts. You will also explore an advanced network simulation tool, named "mininet", for simulating networks. You will learn various networking APIs, APIs for clients and servers, IPv6 compatible APIs. Finally, TCP/IP big picture, basics of TCP, UDP, SCTP and IP, tracing and debugging simple programs and programs with system calls, sock and tcpdump will be covered.

Socket Interface

In this module, you will learn UDP sockets and their usage to develop Echo client-server program, TCP sockets and their usage to develop Echo client-server program, and SCTP sockets and their usage in client-server programs.

Client-Server Computing Model

In this module, you will learn the mechanism to measure server performance, simulating a large number of clients, measuring performance of a large variety of server design options, like TCP iterative server, concurrent server, server with preformed child processes without file locking, server with thread, servers with preformed child processes and file locking, servers with thread locking, develop HTTP client and server programs.

Traditional Client-Server Applications

In this module, you will learn the basics of Telnet and its command structure, Telnet client and server programs, basics of FTP and its process model, FTP client and server programs, advantage of concurrency in server programs, and example implementations of a simple iterative and concurrent web search engines.

Design Issues

In this module, you will learn about the types of socket operation, types of I/O models, blocking and non-blocking I/O models, signal-driven and asynchronous I/O models. Finally, you will revisit str_cli() Function and then go on to develop a better str_cli() function.

Remote Procedure Calls

In this module, you will learn the basics of remote procedure call, concept of door and use it for remote procedure call within a host, understand the function definitions and data structures used in door, get introduced to Sun RPC and use it to build up client-server applications.

Distributed Programming

In this module, you will explore the process of building distributed applications through the use of remote procedure calls (RPC). You will gain a deep understanding of how RPC allows communication between different systems over a network by invoking functions or procedures on remote servers as if they were local. The module will also cover how to represent and transmit data across networks in a way that is independent of any specific programming language, ensuring compatibility between different systems. Additionally, you will learn to work with popular RPC frameworks, gaining hands-on experience in implementing, managing, and optimising these frameworks for effective communication in distributed environments.

Distributed System Design

In this module, you will explore the core challenges faced when designing distributed systems, focusing on the complexities that arise from ensuring communication, consistency, fault tolerance, and scalability across multiple interconnected systems. You will delve into the various design approaches and architectural patterns used to address these challenges, such as client-server models, peer-to-peer networks, and hybrid architectures. Through these discussions, you will gain an understanding of the trade-offs involved in making design decisions, such as balancing performance with fault tolerance, or consistency with availability, which are critical in creating reliable and efficient distributed systems. The module will also cover distributed file systems, specifically the Network File System (NFS) and the Andrew File System (AFS). You will learn how NFS enables remote file access over a network, providing a seamless experience similar to local file access, and how AFS uses a more sophisticated approach with caching and replication mechanisms to improve performance and fault tolerance. By the end of the module, you will have a deeper appreciation for the complexities of distributed system design and the strategies employed to manage the inherent trade-offs in real-world applications.