Lu is clearly really smart. He knows his stuff, but he really misses the learning process in some steps. He's poorly organized, teaches straight from the book's lecture slides, and is COMPLETELY incapable of answering questions. Additionally, he doesn't know what we do or don't know – all great teachers should know what their students know and don't know. We had our first midterm on chapters 1-3 in the middle of week 7. We had learned chapters 1-3 WEEKS 1-3. The projects weren't bad at all, but I liked my partner and we started early on stuff. The material is SO fascinating, but the infrastructure and follow through was just NOT here for this class. Lu definitely knows his stuff, but he's a poor teacher at best.

Lu lectures off powerpoint slides the entire time besides a few minutes when he goes over examples on the board. If you prefer slides then he's the prof to take. However, if you're more interactive and like it when the prof lectures with the blackboard, don't take him. He goes pretty quickly through his slides and much too quickly to actually take good notes. Plus, when he actually does write things out on the board, his diagrams are hard to understand mostly because they are too messy.
Anyway, only half the class attends lecture and a lot of the ones who do attend fall asleep. I went to almost all of his lectures, yet I usually come out of class thinking that I didn't learn very much. The homework is pretty tedious and my TA was pretty horrible so I didn't really enjoy it. However, the programming projects were not that bad and you get a partner to lighten the work load. It's definitely one of the easier CS classes -- I just wish Lu didn't lecture off powerpoints so that I don't have to go home and read the book every time I leave lecture.

I took this during COVID-19, so everything is online. Prof. Lu always posted lecture videos and notes on CCLE very quickly (like right after lectures), and no attendance is needed. We have 8 homework assignments for 20% of our grade (drop one lowest, so 7 in total), and the assignments are usually straight forward and related to what is going to be tested on the exam (so do it carefully). TAs usually goes over 1 or 2 example questions during discussion for us to do the homework.
Projects are done individually (instead of in group like pre-COVID), but they are modified to be easier for one person to do it. Prof offers extra credits for the projects, and it should count up to 3% in your final grade if you do it all. The first project is easy and the second one takes time. TAs will ask you to demo the projects to them in order to give you points, and all the points are given solely based on your demo, so go over the demo requirement carefully beforehand. (Also, the TAs are usually really nice, and they try their best to give you points)
Tests are kinda hard but doable because the class average is usually not very high (like 75-80). You have 2.5 hours to do it and it's open book open notes. (Small hint: check out his older exams to get a sense of how he made up questions and you should do well on the exams)
Overall, not a bad experience and average CS course. Workload is slightly lighter than CS111 (since only 2 projects). Good luck!

This class was definitely tough, especially being virtual. He did 4 quizzes instead of a midterm and a final -- except the quizzes were as hard and long as a midterm/final exam in my opinion, so it felt harder than it would have been in person. Also, being virtual we did the projects solo instead of with partners. The second project was terrible

Honestly, the hardest part for me in this class was learning from the professor in the lectures because of his accent. So that meant I had to learn mainly from the textbook. The material is not too difficult but it is pretty dense. The first project wasn't that bad but the second project was pretty difficult. My issue with the projects is that they don't provide much help on how to do it. The professor won't teach you how to do it and the textbook won't teach you either. You kinda only learn how to do the projects from discussion. The exams are pretty fair and if you know the material from either the textbook or lecture then you'll do good. Since the homework is pretty straightforward and you can learn everything from the textbook, I would say this class is pretty doable. He also had random sign-in sheets to get people to come to class, so if you don't like going to class like me that part sucked lol

A great class with a good professor. Workload is pretty manageable IMO, and Professor Lu delivered very clear lectures about key networking concepts (layered protocols, TCP/UDP, Ethernet/WiFi).

The grading scale was 30% midterm, 30% final, 17% homework, 20% Projects (Project 1 = 8%, Project 2 = 12%) and 3% participation. Unlike past quarters, class attendance is actually required, as for my quarter, the professor circulated a sign-in sheet for like half of the lectures.

The projects weren't too bad since you had a partner, although Project 2 is definitely not the type of project you would enjoy starting last minute. Exams were pretty fair and honestly easier than I had expected. The best way to study for the exams, besides listening attentively in lecture, is to do past exams. For both the midterm and final, over half of the questions were reused or worded very similarly to past exam questions, so it wasn't hard to do well.

I would say I did learn quite a bit about the computer networking field and what it offers, although having a deep understanding would require much more than this course alone. I felt this course was more of a general survey of the networking field, and some topics towards the end were given more superficial treatment or glossed over entirely.

Great professor!

I honestly really enjoyed the class and even though I am not interested in networking at all, the professor was super nice and I ended up going to every single one of his 8 am lectures (even though the lectures were recorded through zoom). The professor has very much improved in comparison to the previous reviews from before 2020. He clearly knows his stuff and has become a better CS 118 teacher and I think if you have the chance you should take the class with him. The TAs were also extremely helpful, and they made the 2 projects easier for this quarter which was super awesome of them. The grading scale was 30% midterm, 30% final, 18% homework, 20% Projects (Project 1 = 8%, Project 2 = 12%) and 2% participation (no clue how he is going to grade this as there was no clicker questions or attendance taken). I haven't taken the final yet, so I can't speak to its difficulty, but considering how fair he is + how leniently the TAs were grading, I am sure it'll be fine. All 3 of the TAs (Zhaowei Tan, Jinghao Zhao, and Yunqi Guo) were excellent and willing to answer questions, but I found that Jinghao Zhao was extremely exceptional, and if he is TAing this class again, take it with him!

Edit: Took the final and it was extremely easy. The professor specifically said "don't look at the practice exam we give you for the content, just look at it for the format", but the actual final exam had multiple questions that were identical to the practice exam and so it was easy to get a high score!

Actually I kind of like this class, and the lectures make me pretty interested in networking. The workload is definitely doable. There are only 2 projects in the entire quarter so you have plenty of time to think it through and do a thorough testing. Even is some test cases fail in the demo, partial credits will be generously rewarded. There are 4 quizzes in total, so be prepared for constantly studying for tests. If the professor did not curve the grade down.. that would be even better.

I think I would recommend this class because it was pretty manageable, except for the second project, which I would compare to a rough cs111 project. For the online format, he has 4 take home 2 hour timed quizzes instead of midterm+final. There are weekly homeworks, which don't take very long, and 2 projects. The first one is fine but the second one was really rough so start early. The projects are graded based off demos so you don't really have to worry about edge cases, which is nice and straightforward.