| Date | Topic | Note |
| Jan 11 | Firewall and NAT: mechanisms and behaviors | |
| Jan 13 | NAT traversal approaches overview | |
| Jan 17 | NAT traversal: discovery and inference | |
| Jan 20 | NAT traversal: approaches | |
| January | Design NAT detector | |
| February | Implement and test NAT detector | |
| March | Design and implement NAT traveler | |
| April | Test NAT traveler | |
| Apr 7 | Report due |
Directed Study gives students interested in some question or subject matter an opportunity to explore it in more detail, under faculty guidance, for credit. I took my first Directed Study in my 4th year. It provided me the first chance to closely cooperate and work with research faculty in the undergraduate level. In Directed Study, you are able to choose your preferred professor and participate in his/her research. Generally, it is mostly like a warm-up research training before the graduate school. It provides an opportunity for your preferred professors to get familiar with you and may be even strongly impressed by you. I heard a lot of my friends were admitted by their preferred supervisors after they had done some research with them. Actually, I got one of my graduate school offers by doing a Directed Study course.
In addition, as you all know that being admitted by a graduate school is very competitive, Directed Study is such a course/training to improve your background, develop your ability and potential and present your talent to research faculty members. The research experience you gained from Directed Study is an asset for you to apply for graduate schools in that graduate committee prefers applicants who have research experience. Concretely speaking, for graduate school admission, GPA is like a "Kernel" and the research experience is like a "Shell". The more research experience you gained the more chance you have to win the game in the admission competition. These "Shells" (research experience) cover your shortages and rank you to the top level among thousand applicants.
Moreover, starting a research in undergraduate level also nails down your research direction on what is worth doing and what you are willing to do in the future. When I was an undergraduate student, I wandered around the different research topics and could not decide which topic would be taken if one day I entered the graduate school. The undergraduate courses provided me a breadth level of different areas but not deeply enough. Instead, Directed Study led me into a specific field and extremely mining on it. Its effect reflects on my graduate study today and this results in sometimes I still use the skills and experience I learned from my Directed Study to solve problems. Actually, I also find out that graduate students who have research experience look more confident and work more efficiently than those who do not have. Directed Study is such an opportunity for you to gain research experience in advance and make your life easier after you become a graduate student.
In conclusion, I found three best benefits by taking Directed Study: Firstly, it provides you opportunities to work with research faculty and increases your possibility of being admitted as their graduate student; Secondly, it improves your education background and enhances your graduate school’s application profiles; Finally, it develops your research ability, makes your graduate life much easier and builds up your confidence. It is worth taking a Directed Study and it makes you special!"
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