2011-01-25
How to work
The difference
Traditional course

Specified scope,
scope course literature and goals

Straightforward exam
This course

You determine scope, course literature and precise goals

Almost like a ”learning contract”

Self written report and presentation to show what you learned
Self-written
This kind of course is a lot harder than one with a regular exam
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The challenges
Planning your work

There is a lot to read and a lot to understand

It takes (calendar) time for things to sink in!
Learning

You need to evaluate the quality and scope of your sources

You need to determine when you have reached the right level
Writing

Selecting and organizing the material

Expressing your understanding of the topic
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The process
Research
Reflect
Read
Write
Evaluate
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Step 1: Research
Find out about the area (meta-level)

Understand the scope of the area as a whole

Find out what the most important topics in the area are

See who works in the area, and why, and who the authorities are

Learn about how publishing works in the area
Find sources of information

Be really careful about the quality of sources (more later)

Organize and prioritize sources of information

Look for gaps in coverage (topical and chronological)
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Step 2: Read (and learn)
Learn about the area and the topic

Understand the topic you are concentrating on

Understand the topic in relation to the area as a whole

Learn about current and coming developments

Try to cover both theory and practice
The reading process

Use multiple sources of information

Contrast, compare and correlate

Make sure you understand what you read
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Step 3: Evaluate
Evaluate what you have read/are reading

Which sources were particularly good

Which sources did not meet your expectations

What areas/topic did the sources not cover

What aspects did the sources not cover
Critically evaluating sources is important

Thi iis iinputt tto th
This
the nextt step
t and
d nextt iteration
it ti

This helps develop understanding of the topic
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Step 4: Reflect
Reflect on the knowledge you have

What parts of the topic/area do you understand well

What parts of the topic/area do you still not understand

Did you discover new topics/areas/relationships while reading
Think about the next step

What kind of additional sources do you need

What additional topics do you need to study

Do you know enough to start writing (how much can you write)
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Step X: Writing
Transfer your knowledge to paper

Never read and write at the same time – risk of plagiarism

Let the writing reflect your understanding

Let the writing reflect your mental model of the topic

Only write about things you really understand
Writing will take place several times

Outline – after you have a high-level
high level grasp of the area and topic

Draft – after the first few iterations of reading

Final – after several more iterations of reading
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Purpose of the report

Show your understanding of the project topic

Show that you understand the context of the topic

Show that you can explain the topic in the infrastructure context

Show that you can organize information about the topic
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Scope of study/scope of report
What you learn
What you put in the report
What you present
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SOURCES
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What constitutes a good source

Pair up and discuss!

Come up with the following (10 minutes)

What characterizes a good source?

What are warning signs for a bad source?

A list of typically good (kinds of) sources

A list of typically bad (kinds of) sources
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Rate my source
In pairs, rate the following sources and explain why:

Xipeng Xiao,
Xiao A.
A Hannan,
Hannan B.
B Bailey,
Bailey L
L.M.
M Li
Li. Traffic engineering with MPLS in
the Internet. IEEE Network 2(14). Mar/Apr 2000.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=826369

Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi Protected Access: Strong, standards-based, interoperable
security for today’s Wi-Fi networks. Wi-Fi Alliance Whitepaper. 2003.
http://www.ans-vb.com/Docs/Whitepaper_Wi-Fi_Security4-29-03.pdf

Wireless Ethernet Bridges. On-line:
http://www.directindustry.com/prod/acksys/wireless-ethernet-bridge-8580405674.html

IEEE. CDMA/CD Access Method. Standard IEEE Std-802.3-2008.

Uyless Black. Second Generation Mobile and Wireless Networks. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall. 1998.
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Examples of (usually) good sources
Peer-reviewed scientific journal papers
Peer-reviewed conference papers

Peer review means the content has been checked by experts

Scientific papers tend to be factual and unbiase

Journal papers are more complete than conference papers

Caveats: quality of the journal, age of the paper
Peer-reviewed workshop papers

Often work in progress or undeveloped ideas

There is often follow-up work which is better to read
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Examples of (usually) good sources
Technical books on the subject

Books are often reviewed by technical experts

Books often give a more complete picture of an area

Caveats: long publishing cycle, publisher quality, target audience
Textbooks

Textbooks are usually fairly easy to read

Textbooks are usually complete with regard to basics

Caveats: textbooks tend to concentrate on theory and ignore reality

Caveats: long publishing cycle, often lack of depth
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Examples of (usually) good sources
PhD theses

Very good technical depth,
depth but very narrowly focused

Caveats: can be hard to read, additional context is needed

Caveats: may over-state the importance of results, age of thesis
Standards, RFCs

Complete technical details in a specific area

Should always be used to confirm other sources (when possible)

C
Caveats:
contain only facts,
f
not context, revisions
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Examples of (usually) bad sources
Product manuals or other technical documentation

Give only the view with respect to a specific product/vendor

Are often biased in favor of a specific vendor

Do not distinguish between vendor-specific and general

However: good to get a feel for practical concerns
Whitepapers from vendors

Purpose of whitepaper: sell product, not inform people

Are often biased in favor of a specific vendor

Highlights technology that the vendor is good at

However: are occasionally very good
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Examples of (usually) bad sources
Student reports and MSc theses

Tend to have fairly low quality – there are better sources available

Are written by people who are not experts in the subject area

However: the occasional MSc thesis contains a good area review
Random websites

Provenance, accuracy, age of information is not known

Are often biased in favor of something (often not expressed)

However: can be useful as a starting point for further research

However: some things can only be found this way
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What about Wikipedia
The good

Often good,
good fairly complete,
complete accurate and up-to-date
up to date information

Often very easy to read and understand
The bad

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, so accuracy is sometimes not good
What do do?

Use Wikipedia as a starting point for further research

Read Wikipedia for an overview, then references for research!
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What about Wikipedia
The good

Often good,
good fairly complete,
complete accurate and up-to-date
up to date information

Often very easy to read and understand
The bad

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, so accuracy is sometimes not good
What do do?

Use Wikipedia as a starting point for further research

Read Wikipedia for an overview, then references for research!
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Citing sources
In-text citation

Text should be readable even if citations are omitted

Place in-text citation after relevant text

Use a standard format (APA is recommended)
List of references

List of all cited sources, placed at the end of the text

Each reference must contain enough information to be identified

Use a standard format (APA is recommended)
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Citing sources (examples)
In 1994, Perkins & Bhagwat (1994) introduced the DSDV protocol, a distance
vector routing protocol for ad
ad-hoc
hoc networks based on the distributed Bellman
Bellman-Ford
Ford
algorithm (Bellman, 1958; Ford and Fulkerson, 1962). DSDV was a forerunner in
the ad-hoc routing area, but never saw commercial use. Concepts in DSDV are
also used in AODV (Perkins, Belding, Royer and Das, 2003).
References
g
y , E.,, Das,, S. (2003).
(
) Ad-Hoc On-Demand Distance
Perkins,, C.,, Belding-Royer,
Vector (AODV) Routing. IETF. RFC 3561.
Perkins, C., Bhagwat, P. (1994). Highly Dynamic Destination-Sequenced Distance
Vector Routing (DSDV) for Mobile Computers. In Proceedings of SIGCOMM 94.
Association for Computing Machinery.
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Quotation
Sometimes (rarely) the exact words of another person are important

In these cases,
cases use quotations with a citation

Excessive quotation is not acceptable (but not quite plagiarism)
In-text quotation
When Schneier (2000) says ”security is a process, not a product”, he means that …
Block quotation
p
the importance
p
of security
y as a p
process:
Schneier ((2000)) explains
Security is a process, not a product. Products provide some protection, but the
only way to effectively do business in an insecure world is to put processes in
place that recognize the inherent insecurity in the products.
By this he means that we cannot do security once, and then be done. Security is
something we always do, all the time.
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PLAGIARISM
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Plagiarism
Dictionary definition
[The] use
se or close imitation of the language
lang age and tho
thoughts
ghts of
another author and the representation of them as one’s own
original work
Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary
Important
 Not just verbatim copying of large amounts of text
 Source
S
off the
th text
t t or ideas
id
d
doesn’t
’t matter
tt
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Plagiarism and citations
It can still be plagiarism if you provide a citation
Example from last year:
A number of recirculating optical loops from some of the switch
output ports are fed back into then switch input port, as shown
is fig 3.6(b) . Recirculation buffering helps resolve contention at
the expense optical signal degradation since looped back
optical packet need to pass the delay units and space switch
more than once. [6]
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Plagiarism and paraphrasing
It can still be plagiarism if you paraphrase heavily
Original
Mobile Hosts cause broken links as they
move from place to place. The broken link
may be detected by the layer-2 protocol, or it
may instead be inferred if no broadcasts have
been received for a while from a former
neighbor. A broken link is described by a
metric of 00 (i.e., any value greater than the
maximum allowed metric). When a link to a
next hop has broken, any route through that
next hop is immediately assigned an 00
metric and assigned an updated sequence
number. Since this qualifies as a substantial
route change, such modified routes are
immediately disclosed in a broadcast routing
information packet.
Plagiarized
Nodes are moving from one place to another
place because of broken links. Broken links
may be discovered by the layer 2 protocols.
Broken link is described by metric .Metric can
be defined as infinity symbol. Let us consider
if a link is broken to a next hop then any route
through the next hop is directly assigned an
infinity symbol as well as updated by the
sequence no .Since its OK as a sustaining
route changed, so changing routes are
directly to expose to view in a transmit of
routing data information .
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Plagiarism and technical content
Student sez:
This is a technical area,
area and I can
can’tt simply change the facts.
facts I have to
present things like this, or the content would be wrong.
Teacher sez:

The facts in technical content have to be correct

But how you present it can and must be original

The more source material yyou have,, the easier it is!

You have to understand the topic very well to know what can and what
can’t be changed
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Why do we care

We can’t judge your understanding of the project topic, only the
understanding
g of the p
person who actuallyy wrote the text

We can’t tell if you understand the context of the topic, only that you
found a source written by someone who did

We don’t know if you can explain the topic in the infrastructure context
(only that someone else could)

Y haven’t
You
h
’t shown
h
th t you can organize
that
i information
i f
ti about
b t the
th topic
t i
(just that someone else could)
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Consequences of plagiarism
Academic suspension

May not participate in lectures

May not participate in labs

May not take exams

May not use lab facilities

May not use computer facilities

May not get help from teachers
Usually one month for first offence
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THE RULES
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This year’s rules
Deadlines are strict

Miss a deadline and you are struck from the course

Notify me ahead of time and we can negotiate
Every submission is part of examination

No progress since last submission: you fail the course

Quality below expectations: you have to submit a revision

Revision below expectations: you fail the course

Plagiarism detected at any point: automatic fail and disciplinary report
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Why am I being an *******?
Because last year was a disaster

Lots of people missed deadlines at all stages

Quality and quantity of much of the work was very low

Fourteen people reported to the disciplinary board

One warning, one one-week and eleven one-month suspensions
Because I don’t have time to deal with a lot of problems

I teac
teach half-time
a t e sp
spread
ead o
over
e se
several
e a cou
courses
ses

I work half-time managing the university network and IT security

I head the network, IRT and telephony unit at the university
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It’s not that difficult, really
Plan your work for the whole semester

This is a hard course and will require a lot of time

You have to work on the course the whole semester
Do the work to specification and on-time

Problems, questions, anything else? Talk to me!
Make sure y
you know how to do this kind of work

This seminar should help quite a bit

Don’t hesitate to e-mail questions or visit my IDA office

Don’t try to take shortcuts: they don’t work very well
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www.liu.se
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