MODERN TELECOMMUNICATION

Telephone
In a conventional wire telephone system, the caller is connected to the person they
want to talk to, by the switches at various exchanges. The switches form an electrical
connection between the two users and the setting of these switches is determined
electronically when the caller dials the number based upon pulses or tones made by the
caller's telephone. Once the connection is made, the caller's voice is transformed to an
electrical signal using a small microphone in the telephone's receiver. This electrical
signal is then sent through various switches in the network to the user at the other end
where it transformed back into sound waves by a speaker for that person to hear. This
electrical connection works both ways, allowing the users to converse.
Mobile phones have had a significant impact on telephone networks. Mobile phone
subscriptions now outnumber fixedline subscriptions in many markets. !ales of
mobile phones in "##$ totalled %&'.' million with that figure being almost e(ually
shared amongst the markets of )sia*+acific ,"#- m., /estern 0urope ,&'- m.,
10M0) ,1entral 0urope, the Middle 0ast and )frica. ,&$2.$ m., 3orth )merica ,&-%
m. and 4atin )merica ,&#" m.. In terms of new subscriptions over the five years from
&555, )frica has outpaced other markets with $%."6 growth. Increasingly these phones
are being serviced by digital systems such as 7!M or /18M) with many markets
choosing to depreciate analogue systems such as )M+!.
Television
The broadcast media industry is at a critical turning point in its development, with
many countries starting to move from analogue to digital broadcasts. The chief
advantage of digital broadcasts is that they prevent a number of complaints with
traditional analogue broadcasts. 9or television, this includes the elimination of
problems such as snowy pictures, ghosting and other distortion. These occur because
of the nature of analogue transmission, which means that perturbations due to noise
will be evident in the final output. 8igital transmission overcomes this problem
because digital signals are reduced to binary data upon reception and hence small
perturbations do not affect the final output. In a simplified example, if a binary
message &#&& was transmitted with signal amplitudes :&.# #.# &.# &.#; and received
with signal amplitudes :#.5 #." &.& #.5; it would still decode to the binary message
&#&& < a perfect reproduction of what was sent. 9rom this example, a problem with
digital transmissions can also be seen in that if the noise is great enough it can
significantly alter the decoded message. =sing forward error correction a receiver can
correct a handful of bit errors in the resulting message but too much noise will lead to
incomprehensible output and hence a breakdown of the transmission.
In digital television broadcasting, there are three competing standards that are likely to
be adopted worldwide. These are the )T!1, 8>? and I!8? standards and the
adoption of these standards thus far is presented in the captioned map. )ll three
standards use M+07" for video compression. )T!1 uses 8olby 8igital )12 for audio
compression, I!8? uses )dvanced )udio 1oding ,M+07" +art @. and 8>? has no
standard for audio compression but typically uses M+07& +art 2 4ayer ".
The Internet
Today an estimated &$.@6 of the world population has access to the Internet with the
highest concentration in 3orth )merica ,'%.'6., Oceania*)ustralia ,$".'6. and
0urope ,2'.&6.. In terms of broadband access, countries such as Iceland ,"'.@6.,
!outh Aorea ,"$.-6. and the 3etherlands ,"$.26. lead the world.
The nature of computer network communication lends itself to a layered approach
where individual protocols in the protocol stack run largely independently of other
protocols. This allows lowerlevel protocols to be customiBed for the network situation
while not changing the way higherlevel protocols operate. ) practical example of why
this important is because it allows an Internet browser to run the same code regardless
of whether the computer it is running on is connected to the Internet through an
0thernet or /i9i connection. +rotocols are often talked about in terms of their place in
the O!I reference model < a model that emerged in &5%2 as the first step in a doomed
attempt to build a universally adopted networking protocol suite.
)t the network layer things become standardiBed with the Internet +rotocol ,I+. being
adopted for logical addressing. 9or the world wide web, these CI+ addressesD are
derived from the human readable form ,e.g. @".&-."#@.55 is derived from
www.google.com. using the 8omain 3ame !ystem. )t the moment the most widely
used version of the Internet +rotocol is version four but a move to version six is
imminent. The main advantage of the new version is that it supports 2.-# E &#
2%
addresses compared to -."5 E &#
5
addresses. The new version also adds support for
enhanced security through I+!ec as well as support for Fo! identifiers. )t the
transport layer most communication adopts either the Transmission 1ontrol +rotocol
,T1+. or the =ser 8atagram +rotocol ,=8+.. /ith T1+, packets are retransmitted if
they are lost and placed in order before they are presented to higher layers ,this
ordering also allows duplicate packets to be eliminated.. /ith =8+, packets are not
ordered or retransmitted if lost. ?oth T1+ and =8+ packets carry port numbers with
them to specify what application or process the packet should be handed to on the
client's computer. ?ecause certain applicationlevel protocols use certain ports,
network administrators can restrict Internet access by blocking or throttling traffic
destined for a particular port.
)bove the transport layer there are certain protocols that loosely fit in the session and
presentation layers and are sometimes adopted, most notably the !ecure !ockets 4ayer
,!!4. and Transport 4ayer !ecurity ,T4!. protocols. These protocols ensure that the
data transferred between two parties remains completely confidential and one or the
other is in use when a padlock appears at the bottom of your web browser. !ecurity is
generally based upon the principle that eavesdroppers cannot factoriBe very large
numbers that are the composite of two primes without knowing one of the primes.
)nother protocol that loosely fits in the session and presentation layers is the Gealtime
Transport +rotocol ,GT+. most notably used to stream FuickTime. 9inally at the
application layer are many of the protocols Internet users would be familiar with such
as HTT+ ,web browsing., +O+2 ,email., 9T+ ,file transfer. and IG1 ,Internet chat.
but also less common protocols such as ?itTorrent ,file sharing. and I1F ,instant
messaging.. ,adapted from www.wikipedia.org.