Ch. 6 - Telecommunications Network Alternatives

Last Thursday, we learned about telecommunications networks and alternatives. A telecommunications network is any arrangement where a sender transmits a message to a receiver over a channel consisting of some sort of medium. There are five different types of communications networks: WAN, P2P, Client/Server, LAN and VPN. It was really interesting to learn more about Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Networks, because I know these types of networks are extremely popular in file-sharing and music-sharing, especially. For example, Napster used P2P file-sharing software with central server architecture. Their software connected each user's PC to a central server that contained a directory of all the other users in the network. When one user requested a file, the server would search the directory for any other users who had that file and were online. The advantages of central server P2P networks is that they can better protect the integrity and security of the content and users of the network; however, the directory is slower and can be overwhelmed by too many users or technical problems.

We also learned about three different types of telecommunications media: twisted-pair wire, coaxial cable, and fiber-optic cable. Twisted-pair wire is cheap and robust, but extremely slow. Coaxial cable is faster and has greater bandwith, but also has a thick coating that makes it difficult to move or manipulate. The winner is fiber-optic cable, which is very fast and does not lose or corrupt data; however, it is expensive and prone to damage.

We learned a lot more information about wireless technologies, telecommunications processors and software, network architecture and protocols, and bandwith and switching alternatives. I won't go into detail about these in this post, but this section definitely had a lot more information to learn than the last section. But I am finding this chapter easier to understand than the last unit, although it is still challenging because it's very technical.