ITC-2300 Assignment Details and Directions for Fall 2026

Class Participation

Active, direct engagement is the core driver of this course. Because of our small seminar format, class meetings rely entirely on collaborative problem-solving, open discussion, and real-time lab work. Your participation grade evaluates three key areas:

  • Preparation: Arriving having thoroughly read assigned materials, documentation, and RFCs, ready to discuss underlying concepts without preliminary lecture.

  • Active Lab Collaboration: Engaging fully during hands-on lab sessions—talking through technical logic out loud, testing configurations alongside your peers, and asking probing questions when encountering unexpected system behavior.

  • Architectural Dialogue: Contributing meaningfully to whiteboard sessions, technical trade-off debates, and live troubleshooting exercises as both an engineer and an active listener.

You will receive a grade for class participation after each class session.

Engineering Journal

Throughout the semester, you will maintain a running, professional Engineering Journal documenting every technology, system topology, and lab deployment we explore. This is not a formal academic paper, but rather an industry-standard engineering log capturing your technical process, choices, and failures. For each lab topic, your journal must include:

  • System Topology & Architecture: Clear diagrams and explanations of the underlying network flow, protocols involved, and system boundaries.

  • Configuration & Implementation: Key command-line entries, configuration file snippets, scripts, and deployment steps with notes on why specific settings were chosen.

  • Troubleshooting & Root-Cause Analysis: Detailed accounts of issues encountered during labs, packet captures analyzed, fault injections diagnosed, and how solutions were derived.

  • Key Takeaways & Best Practices: Personal reflections on security implications, operational edge cases, and performance trade-offs for each technology.

You will need to submit your engineering journal several times throughout the semester and it should be kept up to date at least every week. The instructor may ask to see and grade your journal at any time during the course.

Course Project (Case Study)

For your final assessment, you and your partner will design, build, and demonstrate a complete, integrated infrastructure solution that includes one or more technologies covered throughout the term. The project consists of three deliverables:

  • Live Infrastructure Demonstration: A functional, end-to-end demonstration of your built system running live in the lab environment.

  • Socratic Technical Defense: A presentation to the instructor detailing your architectural decisions, traffic flows, and security considerations, followed by an interactive Q&A where you defend your design choices against alternative engineering approaches.

  • Live Fault Resolution: During your demonstration, the instructor may inject a real-time configuration failure or system break into your environment. You will be evaluated on your ability to systematically diagnose, isolate, and resolve the issue on the spot using standard troubleshooting workflows.

Document Build Time: 2026-08-24 21:06:07 UTC
Page Version: 2026.08
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License