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