Networking CS: beyond the first course

• Authors: Joseph D. Sloan;Andy Lopez;Randy K. Smith;Dick Mowe
• Venue: SIGCSE '02 Proceedings of the 33rd SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
• Year: 2002

We face a need for undergraduate instruction in networking and telecommunications. The Computing Research Association has identified both web-specialists and network-designers as being among the seven occupations where there is a clearly established shortage of professionals [2]. Even with the recent softening of the economy, individuals in the networking and telecommunications field are highly sought after as attested to by surveys such as RHIConsulting's® recent survey of 1400 CIOs nationwide [4]. It is imperative to ask how these individuals will be educated.Historically, telecommunications has been hardware oriented. Consequently, it has been in the domain of Electrical Engineering. The ongoing convergence of communications and computing, however, has drastically shifted the focus of telecommunications and considerably broadened the field. Many of the new areas of telecommunications will not fit neatly into old categories. Some are much closer to Computer Science than Electrical Engineering.Schools wishing to address this need must begin by deciding what should be taught. For two-year schools, the ACM has issued guidelines for several programs [1]. For four-year institutions, the curriculum remains an open question. The primary guidelines for four-year institutions are the dated 1991 Computing Curricula [5] and the emerging Computing Curricula 2001 Computer Science [3]. As the goal of these documents is to define the core needs of the CS discipline, understandably, neither goes beyond outlining an introductory course in networking. Schools interesting in educating professionals in networking and telecommunications will need to go beyond this first course. A key question would seem, then, in teaching networking, what should be taught beyond the first course?Our panel presents three quite different positions---that the basic need can be met with a single well-designed course, that a few advanced courses will meet the need, and that a collection of courses constituting a minor is called for.