Gawd, are we still on this thread? This whole question of "which is harder" is (to use a technical term) dumb. Which is harder, number theory or translating Beowulf? How about coaching a pro football team vs. directing a movie like lord of the rings? This whole thing is becoming an apples vs oranges argument.
what follows may be outdated, but it's my story and i'm stickin' to it. it's based on experience with a local university. On Thu, 2003-01-02 at 17:41, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote: > I hope the smiley means you aren't serious. Let me pose some CS > questions, which I swear are off the top of my head. In all > fairness, I'm not sure if some of these will be advanced > undergraduate or graduate level, but we have been talking about CCIE > vs. PhD... I have tried to select questions that bear on real > networks. > > CS-programming. > Compare and contrast NP-hard, NP-complete, and NP-incomplete algorithms > Review the optimal search and update algorithms for trees and tries. > Identify four major searching and sorting algorithms and describe their > advantages and disadvantages where i went to school, this was CS 594 territory - 2nd year MS students. > Extract a square root using Newton-Raphson iteration, or select a > different > method and explain why it is superior. high school? the analysis part would be more of a CS thing, but it doesn't really fit into undergrad discrete math programs either, so perhaps it's a grad school topic. > Describe a strategy for change control in a programming team. The > software > library will include documentation, source, linkable elements, and > executables. this is so undertaught in school that it really irritates me just thinking about it. This is one that you have to be a pro to grok. > What record locking mechanisms are needed to ensure integrity of a > hierarchical linked list? i've hired numerous programmers from cs that don't comprehend multithreading at all. perhaps this is another learn-on-the-job thing, or at least something learned indirectly while engaging in school projects. these issues are particularly significant in the context of threaded programming, but UNIX hasn't had good thread support until recently, and the "good" is arguable, outside of solaris. I'd be interested to hear from other CS students to know if issues like this were a part of your education. > What are the types of commitment protocols and the basic ACID properties > of transactions? CS 570, 2nd year MS students. > How can a buffer overflow be exploited to gain control? haha... i wish this were taught... it'd make for better programmers. think java and stl here - programming instruction never gets this detailed, except *maybe* in assembly or computer architecture classes, and even then you'd have to expect a student to reason through it and figure it out - they wouldn't be taught this. > Build a Monte Carlo simulator for network traffic following Markov, > exponential, fractal, and Erlang B and C pdf's for both interarrival > and service time. CS 522, second-year MS students > Characterize the major conceptual differences among the FORTH, FORTRAN > IV, > LISP, PROLOG, Pascal, C, Ada, C++ and SQL languages > Give examples of data structures using isomorphism, homomorphism, and > monomorphism. > What is a context-free grammar? > Differentiate between abstract syntax, operational semantics, and > transfer > syntax. compiler design classes in undergrad, probably, but the compare/contrast question is unanswerable by most undergrads due to lack of experience with many of those languages. And, you're forgetting java. :-) > > > CS-operating systems > Describe the difference between a kernel and a microkernel and their > relationships to operating systems. > Discuss strategies for managing buffer allocation, fragmentation, and > garbage collection. > Compare and contrast polling versus interrupts in a real-time OS. > Describe at least four major types of multiprocessing. You may include > multistream single processors. > How can you do a hitless software upgrade on a real-time OS? > Differentiate between processes, tasks, and threads in POSIX. > Describe the requirements for transparent failover among multiple > processors, including the context switching issues. > What are the differences between reentrancy and serial reusability? > Compare backup strategies and management, including serial media, > various types of RAID, and write-once optical storage. > What is a deadly embrace? > What is the difference between mandatory and discretionary access > control? > Is compartmentation orthogonal to sensitivity? > What is the Bell-Lapadula theorem and where is it used? > What is a covert channel and how do you protect against it? > What is the difference between spawning and forking? > How are named vs. unnamed pipes used, and what is their relationship > to semaphores and sockets? > probably cs 410 - senior year - but it'd be a good course to cover hyperthreading, etc. also, gc is a compiler design thing, junior year iirc. some of this stuff would be the grad equiv, first-year ms students. > > > CS-networking my favorite axe to grind :) > Compare and contrast error management using ARQ, parallel transmission, > and FEC advanced signalling - CS511 - first year MS > What issues do CALEA and E911 have on multiservice router design? this would appear in grad school in a directed reading or something. a friend of mine did his thesis on the e911 problem. CALEA is for law school or bus school imho. > Discuss the evolution in Internet topology that has led to greater > BGP instability? Focus on topological changes. CS 521, second-semester ms > Differentiate between codecs and transcoders, and identify the > impairments they introduce. first year MS maybe? some is covered in that signalling class (511). > What limitation does the Dijkstra algorithm impose on subsecond > convergence > time? What are potential fixes to the problem? probably CS352 (junior year), but advanced analysis may have to wait until grad school. > Define unicity distance and its applicability to two coding schemes. > What is QAM? Trellis encoding? > What is the role of a phase-locked loop in received signal timing? > To what sorts of signals is it relevant? > CS511... first-semester MS... with some in cs411, for seniors > Why are there pulse density restrictions in DS-x and E-x signals? heh... dunno.. :) > > In what routing protocol did Floyd identify the problem of weak > synchronization, and how is it corrected? > What is the effect of the Byzantine Generals (also called Byzantine > Corruption) problem on high availability, and what are workarounds? CS526 - thrid semester grad > What is van Eck radiation and how does it affect security? not sure, could be mentioned in 2 sentences anywhere, or studied in depth waaay deep into grad school > Why are external routes given lesser preference in link state protocols, > and what is their effect on the Dijkstra algorithm? CS526 - 3rd sem grad > What is a LFN (elephant) and what do you do about it? hmm... long file name? la femme nakita? stumped again! > Why does OSPF use the lollipop algorithm for sequence numbers? CS526, 3nd sem grad > What is Huffman compression and how does it improve JPEG transmission? not sure where this fits... covered in CS594 (4th sem grad) for sure > Why is regenerative feedback a bad method of controlling systems? > Describe the functions of the OSI session layer in recovery. god i hate this sort of question. struck on principle. > What is the limitation of source-destination hash load balancing in > traffic engineering? CS526 > What probability function best describes Internet traffic? CS522, but again, lots of programs don't cover this adequately. I've led several different teams with responsibility for answering the "how much bandwidth do we need" question, and it's hard, and poorly covered in general. > Why does TFTP use a fixed record size? never covered explicitly unless in a reading or something; probably easy enough to reason through though. > What are the differences between XDR and ASN.1? CS521, 2nd sem ms > What mathematical principle underlies frame control sequences? hmm... mabye undergrad, junior or senior year - this is relavent in several contexts > Describe the silly window syndrome. CS521 > Why has the destination preference attribute of BGP not been deployed? directed reading for sure > Differentiate among system, layer, and station management. hmmm... second year grad prolly This list leaves out a lot of prerequisite stuff. Probably 3 years' work would be required to get to the point of taking any of the classes i mentioned. Then again, much of the same stuff is prereq for CCIE study. How about the other side of the coin? - detailed knowledge of protocols and design principles (not just theory) - usually CS school gets you TCP, IP, UDP, and maybe a couple more. CCIE gets you a *lot* more. - many programs leave students having never done simple troubleshooting. No "know-how" is taught (by definition?), so you can't sit a MS grad down and have her/him build a network without making dumb mistakes - until two years ago, students from one program i'm familiar with hadn't ever used a protocol analyzer on graduation with a ms in cs with a networking emphasis - security is completely neglected in many programs, and is undertaught in most others. there are, of course, exceptions to this, but the bottom line is that network security, secure programming, etc., are often not well understood by grads. Most of the content of most of the books we toss around on this list is absent from most cs programs, mostly. :) -sd Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=60171&t=59481 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
