Teaching Computer Communication Networks: Top-down or Bottom-up?

There are two major approaches for teaching computer communication networks, the top-down (from application-layer and go downwards) and the bottom-up (from physical-layer and go upwards) approach. Over the years, the top-down approach is favored by computer science instructors while bottom-up approach is favored by electrical engineering instructors, mainly because of their educational background, and there have been very few studies on which approach is more appropriate from the students’ perspective. In this paper, we present our study on which approach is more appropriate for students to learn this subject. We compare the students’ feedback from the same introductory class on computer communication networks offered by the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in two different semesters, one taught with top-down approach and one taught with bottom-up approach. The result shows that students who are more experienced and hardware-oriented find the bottom-up approach more beneficial to them while lower-classmen and those who are more software-oriented favors the top-down approach.