Application Of Client/Server Paradigm And Web Technologies In A Networking Course

Commercial organizations realize the importance of providing information over the internet to customers about the services they provide. Today, the world wide web serves as the primary vehicle to get this information to the customer while the back end database and client-server technologies are used to process the information and deliver them to the web client. Therefore, the need for people with expertise in the areas of client-server technology and web foundations is becoming increasingly more important. An undergraduate course in data communications and networking can provide students with conceptual information of the client-server paradigm along with providing students with some hands-on experience. By building web enabled client-server applications as part of their classroom projects, students will be able to bridge the relationship between client-server concepts and delivery of information over the internet. We believe that an application to query a well known server, say, finger using a web based client will provide them the necessary hands-on experience. A project that implements the above ideas begins with building a client form on the world wide web in HTML code. Next, a Common Gateway Application (CGI) is developed in perl language to extract the form data. A network module is then used to transmit the client data to the server process, whether the server process resides on the same computer or on a different computer. The server, which is not implemented by the student, receives the client data and processes it and then generates a response in HTML code. The response is then transmitted back to the client via the same network module that carried the client data to the server processes. Finally, the web client renders the response on the screen. This simple project helps students to visualize the flow of information in a real world application scenario. It also integrates nicely with the concepts introduced in class: TCP/IP protocol suite, client-server paradigm, and functional details of well known application servers such as finger. By requiring that the student implementation of the client software communicates with the server software from the OS manufacturer (traditional services such as finger are usually bundled with Page 279.1 the OS), the students are exposed to interface and multivendor interoperability issues. Finally, the project is modular and is assigned as a group project which can help students in promoting interpersonal, leadership and project management skills.