ECE PMs eu caso aed Router \We can also think of the Internet in terms of the connections that carry the most traffic, which consist of a set of fibre-optic cables laid under the sea and across land, which can be described as a ‘mesh’ structure, This mesh of cables contains many points where the cables connect together, which we call nodes. At every node isa device called the router. Routers are found nat anlyin the general ‘mesh’ of the internet but also within the ISP networks. Each router is connected to several other routers and its function is to choose the best route for a transmission. The details of how a router works are discussed in Chapter 17 (Section 17.05), Question 2.02 How near are you to an under-t 1e-sea Internet fibre-optic cable? Public switched telephone network (PSTN) Communication systems that were not originally designed for computer networking provide significant infrastructure support for the Internet. The longest standing examples what is often referred to as POTS (plain old telephone service) but is more formally described as a PSTN (public switched telephone network). There is some discussion about how PSTNs provide that support in Chapter 17, During the early years of networking the telephone network carried analogue voice data, However, digital data could be transmitted provided that a modem was used to convert the digital data to analogue signals. Another modem was used to reverse the process at the receiving end, Such so-called ‘dial-up’ connections provided modest-speed, shared access when required, However, an organisation could instead pay fora leased line service that provided a dedicated, permanently connected link with guaranteed transmission speed, Typically, organisations made use of leased lines to establish WANS (or possibly MANs (metropolitan area networks). More recently, the PSTNs have upgraded their main communication lines to fibre-optic cable ‘employing digital technology. This has allowed them to offer improved leased line services 10 ISPs but has also given them the opportunity to provide their own ISP services. In this role they provide two types of service. The firsts broadband network connection for traditional network access, The second is WiFi hotspot technology, where an access point as described in Section 2.04 has a connection to a wired network providing Internet access. Cell phone network For users of devices with mobile (cell) phone capability there isan alternative method for {gaining internet access, This is provided by mobile phone companies acting as SPs. The mobile phone, equipped with the appropriate software, communicates with a standard cell tower to cress the witeless telephone network, which in turn prewides a cannection tothe Internet 2.07 Applications that make use of the Internet The World Wide Web (WWW) Itis common practice to talk about ‘using the web’ or ‘using the Internet’ as though these ‘were just two different ways of saying the same thing, This is not true. The Internet is, as, has been described above, an Internetwork. By contrast, the World Wide Web (WWW) is a distributed application which is available on the Internet,Part 1: Chapter 2: Communication and networking technologies Specifically the web consists of an enormous collection of websites each having one or more web pages. The special feature of a web page is that it can contain hyperlinks which, when Clicked, give direct and essentially immediate access to other web pages. Cloud computing Cloud computingis the provision of computing services usually via the Intemet. An crganisation may choose to establish its own private cloud, In this case there are three possible approaches: + The organisation takes full responsibilty for creating and managing the cloud installed on-site and connected toa private network + The organisation outsources to a third-party the creation and management of an on-site installation connected to a private network + The organisation outsources the creation and management of an internet accessible system bya third-party. The alternative is public cloud, This is created, managed and owned by a third-party cloud service provider. The services provided by a cloud are familiar ones provided by file servers and application servers. They are accessible va a browser and therefore accessible from any suitable device in any location, A public cloud can be accessed by an individual user or by an organisation. (One major difference is the scale ofthe systems, The provision is established using large ‘mainframe computers or server farms, The services provided can be characterised as, being one of: Pn + infrastructure provision + platform provision + software provision Many ofthe advantages to a cloud user arise from the fact that the cloud does not have the limitations that the systems already available have. For the infrastructure provision, the advantages include the better performance when running software and the increased storage capacity. For the platform provision, the cloud can offer facilities for software development and testing, For the software provision, the cloud will beable to run applications that require high performance systems. alternatively, it could be thatthe costs toa company of buying and installing a software package themselves would be far too high, The other advantage isthe familiar one with regard to outsourcing, The cloud user no longer needs technical expertise. The disadvantages toa cloud user relate to the use of a public cloud, The cloud service provider has complete access to all of the data stored on the cloud. The cloud user cannot be sure that their data isnot being shared with third-parties. Ths is concer with regard to data privacy. The security of the data stored isan issue; the cloud service provider's being relied on to ensure data cannot be lostECE PMs eu caso aed streaming Streaming media make use of the Internet for leisure activities ike listening to music or watching a video. But whats ‘bitstream’? In general, before datas transmitted itis stored in bytes which canbe transmitted one after the other as a ‘byte steam Because of the file sizes involved, streamed media is always compressed to a sequence of bits -a ‘bit stream’ Generic compression techniques mentioned in Chapter 1 (Section 1.07) can convert the byte stream toabitstreamwith fewerbits overall Forthe decoding process atthe receiver endo work property the data must be transferred asa bitstream For one category of streaming media, the source is a website that has the media already stored. One option in this case is for the user to download a file then listen to it or watch it at some future convenient time, However, when the user does nat wish to wait that long there is the streaming option. This option is described as viewing or listening on demand. In this case the delivery of the media and the playing of the media are two separate processes, The incoming media data are received into a buffer created on the user’s computer, The user’s machine has media player software that takes the media data from the buffer and plays i The other category of streaming media is real-time or live transmission. inthis case the content is being generated as itis being delivered such as when viewing 2 sporting event. At the receiver end the technology is the same as before. The major problem is at the delivery end because a very large number of users may be watching simultaneously. The way this is ‘managed now is to transmit the media initially toa large number of content provider servers which then transmit onwards to individual users. Acrucial point with media streaming is whether the technology has sufficient powerto EO provide a satisfactory user experience. When the media is created its the intention that the media isto be delivered to the user at precisely the same speed as used for its creation; ‘song that lasted four minutes when sung for the recording would sound very peculiar if, when itis received by a user, it lasts six minutes. The process of delivering the content is determined by the bit rate. For example, a relatively poor-quality video can be delivered at abit rate of 300 kbps but a reasonably good-quality audio file only requires delivery at 128 kbps. Figure 2.09 shows a simple schematic diagram of the components involved in the streaming, Control data Media server Media \q___| Buffer — pares Data flow User's computer Figure 2.09 Schematic diagram of bit streamingPart 1: Chapter 2: Communication and networking technologies The buffer must deliver the data to the user, atthe correct bitrate for the media being used. Data whichis sent into the buffer should be sent at a higher rate to allow for unexpected delays. The media player continuously monitors how fll the buffer is and controls the bit rate in relation to the defined high-and low-water marks, Iti essential to have a buffer size that is sufficiently large for itnever to get filled The rate of transmission to the bufferis limited by the bandwidth of the network connection. For a connection via a PSTN, a broadband link is essential. For good-quality, movie presentation the broadband requirement s about 25 Mbps. Because this will not be available forall users itis often the practice that an individual video is made available at different levels of compression. The most highly compressed version will be the poorest quality but the bit rate may be sufficiently low fora reasonable presentation with a relatively low bandwidth Internet connection. Task2.02 Consider a bit-streaming scenario for a video where the following values apply ‘+ the buffer size is 1 MiB ‘+ the low-water marks set at 100 KiB ‘+ the high-water mark is set at 900 KiB ‘+ the incoming data rate is 1 Mbps ‘+ the video display rate is 300 Kbps. ‘Assume that the video is playing and thatthe buffer content has dropped to the low water mark. The media player sets the controls for data input to begin again. Se See ‘amount of data that will be removed from the buffer in the same time period. Repeat the calculation for 4,6, 8, 10 and 12 seconds. From this data, estimate when the buffer will have filled up to the high-water mark. ‘Assuming that the incoming transmission is halted at this time, calculate how long it will be before the buffer content has again fallen to the low-water mark level, 2.08 IP addressing The Internet requires technical protocols to function. A protocol suite called TCP/IP is used as a standard (see Chapter 17).One aspect of this is IP addressing, which is used to define from where and to where data is being transmitted. IPv4 addressing Currently the Internet uses Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addressing, IPv4 was devised inthe late 1970s, before the invention ofthe PC and the mobile phone. IPv4 provides fora large but limited number of addresses for devices, which is no longer enough to cover all the devices expected to use the Internet in future, The IPv4 addressing scheme is based on 32 bits (four bytes) being used to define an IPv4 address. Itis worth putting this into context, The 22 bits allow 2¥ different addresses. For big numbers lke this itis worth remembering that 2" is approximately 1000 in denary so the