I am taking a networking class(data communication) this coming semester. In many courses in my computer engineering degree, the books lack mathematical content. I am not a math wizard, but I think mathematics has the potential to give a much deeper understanding of different concepts, but it requires more work.
Is it a good idea to focus on information theory(found a cool book by a researcher from Bell Labs) and use a more "high level" book like Computer networking, A top down approach as supplementary text?
1 Answer 1
At the very lowest level, information theory is highly relevant to networking, as it lays the foundation for getting the best combination of peak bandwidth and error resilence from your hwardware.
However, that part is probably not going to be covered in much detail in a class on networking, as it's mainly relevant to hardware developers. Higher levels of the networking stack are probably going to get more attention. So it's probably not ideal to focus your attention on that part.
But this is guesswork - why not ask the professor who will hold the class?