Jessie Hui Wang @ Tsinghua University

The Internet has had a huge impact on our social life, and it is necessary for everyone in modern society to understand how the Internet works. This course is for students from all departments and does not require any prerequisite courses. The development of the Internet is the result of various factors such as technology, economy, and politics, and this course will try to cover all these factors. The course consists of the following three parts.

The first part will focus on the basic principles of various key technologies in the the Internet, avoiding technical details as much as possible to suit students with different professional backgrounds. It includes but not limited to DNS, IPv4, IPv6, TCP, and routing protocols (OSPF and BGP).

The second part will focus on the cyberspace security issues and the challenges brought about by emerging applications to the performance of the Internet. It includes but not limited to 1) virtual reality (VR) live broadcast content distribution; 2) vehicle networking and opportunistic networks; 3) smart cities, augmented reality (AR) and related edge computing technologies; 4) ultra-low-delay network and its challenges; 5) Internet surveillance and situational awareness of Internent routing.

The third part focuses on economic and political factors, i.e., "cyberspace governance". It includes several lectures from the teacher and some talks given by students on the issues such as 1) key issues of cyberspace governance; 2) Internent standardization and international organizations; 3) the allocation of key digital resources (blockchain-based decentralized technology); 4) Net neutrality disputes, copyright law incidents, etc.

This course emphasizes both knowledge imparting and ability trainning. Lectures are mainly focused on basic concepts, principles, and frameworks. Teacher-student interactions during lectures are encouraged. The course will arrange 2-4 experiments/visits. Students are required to give presentations in groups on selected topics. The grading is based on course attendance, class participation, and the quality of presentations (groups).

Through this course, students will have a comprehensive understanding of how networks belonging to different companies and organizations form the Internet and provide services to various applications, how the various parties in the Internet collaborate and compete, the current challenges and development of Internet management, and the focuses of controversies in cyberspace governance.