To be honest, I didn't attend many of the class lectures. However, I did fine by doing all the assigned reading (which was a bit heavy but the textbook is interesting) and checking the slides to review the important topics. The lectures I did attend were interesting, but I had trouble paying attention because her voice is a bit quiet at times. However, you can definitely tell that the professor knows what she's talking about. Sometimes she tells funny stories, too!

The homework questions are sometimes a bit vague, but the TAs do a good job of clarifying on Piazza. The homework assignments also took varying amounts of time, but none of them were too long. I thought the projects were really useful for learning about networking concepts. We got to have a group (1-3) for the second project, which was time consuming to debug but overall fine.

For the midterm, you should be fine as long as you understand the slides and how to do the homework. I'm not sure about the final because we were allowed to opt-out due to COVID-19.

Just ask people who took this class my quarter. It was not a fun time.

Great professor. Makes the subject extremely interesting, and tests are fair but difficult. You will leave the class with a solid understanding of networking. The second project is time-consuming, but clarifies important concepts.

Overall professor Zhang is a better lecturer than most professors. She's to the point, but also not too fast. She also drops small stories of her time at Xerox Parc and it's insane she was at the center of networking and computer research. Project 2 was the worst because the TAs kept making mistakes and changes to the example program and it kept confusing everyone.

The professor is very knowledgeable and loves to answer every question in the class. The course helps you learn something really useful and interesting. However, the exams and projects are not very easy and you need to study really hard and understand every detailed concepts to perform well in this class.

Zhang has to be one of the worst professors I’ve ever taken. She is terribly disorganized, and generally quite useless. The homework’s, tests and projects aren’t too bad in and of themselves l, however Zhang manages to make them confusing. I enjoyed the material of the class however I’d strongly recommend not to take this Professor

This class is hard. Do take time going to class and read the book if you can. If you have anything unclear, do not hesitate to ask TA or professor for help. You must be crystal clear of every concept before final since final is hard.

Not sure what Lixa Zhang the other reviewers took, but I highly DONT recommend her. Lectures were the most boring I have ever had in a CS class, and the projects were awful.

Shout out to Ilya Moiseenko, the second worst TA I've had: the projects were copied and pasted from other schools, but wherever the spec was modified, he managed to fuck it up and write directions that only worked on his computer.

Got my grade back and I got an A. Great professor in retrospect.

Pros:

Good lecturer, obviously knows her stuff and can explain a lot of things

Excellent homework, takes a short period of time (unlike some teachers that assign homework that takes FOREVER) but really checks to see if you understand the material.

Grades are fair

Encourages you to work hard. You HAVE to read the book and really understand networking and the class if you want to do well.

Cons:

Projects are pretty epic. Haven't spent that much time on a project class since 111. Especially the second project. Make sure you know your forks and mutexes before you go into this class or you are up a creek, no paddle, and lots of sharks.

Recommendation:

Yes! Take her, you will learn a ton about networking. Just be committed to the class.

Tips:

Understand how TCP SYN/ACK works, seq, ack numbers, flags. How DNS works, the differences between the protocols, and just overall networking ideas like how switches operate at the ethernet/frame/link-level and how that differs from how routers work via IP addresses.

Start early on the projects.

Read the book.

Liked her lectures, she's good with questions. A nice person who tries to make a fairly boring subject interesting.

Her grading is fairly flat, split 25% for midterm, final, homework, and projects. This means you have to be on top of your shit the whole quarter. None of that whole do-well-on-the-final-get-A business.

I ended up doing really well on both projects and the final, but bombed the midterm and the homeworks. Didn't get my grade back, but I'm really hoping for an A- (B+ is pretty reasonable too I guess).

For 118:
Do expect to spend a good chunk of time on it. Networking takes time to learn and is not something you can just mess around with. Having a good fundamental understanding of networking is how you do well on Zhang's tests, because they test you on your in-depth understanding of the material.

Take this class with M117 if you can, it's enlightening to take two networking classes at the same time and you can approach the subject from top (applications-level) down and bottom (physical) up.