Attendance rate is declining fast

If you look at the attendance record you'll see that I've added two rows in the bottom showing the total number of attendees on each session and a moving average too.

I can see there is a steep decline in the attendance to the class. Whether this is due to a problem that can be fixed or not I do not know. I just hope you're not given up the subject as still there is one month left. If there is something that needs to be changed in the classroom just talk to me.

Attendance to my office hours is very low too. I just want to remind you that I am here to help and that office hours are part of the instruction.

Sample micro web server

The sample code shows a very basic web server that handles requests one at a time. A text line is printed showing the file requests. Please note the contents to be served has to be in the same folder of the server binary.

BTW, web server listens on port 7777, but you may change that if you wish.

Click on this entry's title to see the code on pastie's page. Please note there is a download link on the upper right corner there.

Second assignment

Though you still have two weeks to turn in your first assignment, the second one is published too.

Do not worry because you have till December 20th, 2010.

This time it is a server what you have to do (a multi-threaded server). The good news is that the application protocol is very simple. After connecting to the server, the client may send one line of text containing an arithmetic expression (i.e. 1+2*3/4) and the server will respond with another text line containing the result of evaluating this expression (i.e. 2.5) or an error message if there is something wrong with the client expression.

Client will signal the server its willingness to quit by sending an empty line. Server will provide no other answer to the empty line but closing the connection.

Several clients can be using the server at the same time and all of them need to be served right away.

You can find here the Eval.java mentioned on the assignment text.

Another useful tool

Though we have mentioned traceroute command in the class. I want to bring your attention to a better alternative: mtr program and its windows version WinMTR.

What it does is a more in depth statistical analysis of the path from your computer to a certain destination. Contrary to traceroute, mtr command is kept running till you press "q" or Ctrl+C as it is constantly updating its measurements.