COS-461 Assignments


Collaboration Policy

Programming, like composition, is an individual creative process. Individuals must reach their own understanding of the problem and discover a path to its solution. During this time, discussions with friends are encouraged. However, when the time comes to write the code that solves the problem, such discussions are no longer appropriate; the program must be your own work.

Do not, under any circumstances, copy another person's program. This includes relevant Linux source. Writing code for use by another or using another's code in any form is academic fraud and will be dealt with harshly. You are also responsible for ensuring that the code you write for the assignments is not readable by others.

Computing Facilities

The assignments will be implemented on the Linux machines in Friend 010. You can SSH to the machines from other computers in the Computer Science department (e.g., portal.cs.princeton.edu). Please contact us if you have any trouble accessing your account.

Programming Assignments

The first two programming assignments will provide an introduction to socket programming. The remaining three programming assignments will use the Virtual Network System created at Stanford University, and will cover the network (IP), transport (TCP), and application layers (HTTP).

All assignments are due at 11:59pm of their assigned days.

Assignment Submission

We will use Blackboard to submit assignments.

Late Submission

You should submit your work on an assignment (electronically) before its due time. All assignments will be due at 11:59pm on their selected days. We will be giving special prizes for the first student to submit work for full credit per assignment. If you submit your work late, we will give you credit for it on this scale:

We will grant extensions only in the case of illness (with a doctor's note) or extraordinary circumstances. If illness or an extraordinary circumstance will cause you to submit an assignment late, then you should discuss the matter with your instructor as soon as possible. Please plan your work on the assignments so that travel, religious holidays, etc. do not cause you to submit it late. Note that heavy workload is not an extraordinary circumstance.

That said, you are allowed one "free" late day during the semester (that can be applied to one of assignments 1 through 4).

The final assignment is due on the Dean's Date, and we are not permitted to accept work after that date. Thus you may not turn in the final assignment late.

Coding Style

All of the code you turn in for this course should have good style. Make sure that your code has proper indentation, descriptive comments, and a comment header at the beginning of each file, which includes your name, userid, and a description of the file. In addition, your code should never leak memory and should always check the return value of function calls.


Last updated: Wed Apr 29 23:24:43 -0400 2009