Section two of this Unit is designed to ensure that you are as familiar with the contents of Chapters 2 and 3 of Tanenbaum as you need to be for the purposes of this Unit, in particular for network management and design. Remember, Tanenbaum is the key resource - the following sub-sections provide a commentary and guide to that resource.
Reading even one of these chapters straight off might seem to be a daunting exercise, so the task have been broken down into more manageable chunks and we have given some guidance about what is most important.
We start with Transmission Media.
To give an understanding of the media, topological and signalling alternatives available to the network designer.
On completing this section you should be familiar with the three main types of underlying communications media and their key features.
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Recommended Reading Read Tanenbaum Chapter 2, sections 2.1 through 2.3 (pages 77 to 101). Do not worry too much about the mathematics of Fourier series, but try to grasp the general principle of what is going on. |
The following information may be useful if you are rusty on logarithms. Remember that logarithms are the opposite (the technical term is "inverse") of exponentials. For example:
log2 (2) = 1 because 2^1 = 2
log2 (4) = 2 because 2^2 = 4
log2 (128) = 7 because 2^7 = 128.
It is similar for logarithms to the base of 10:
log10 (100) = 2 since 10^2 =100.
Also note that:
log2(N) = log10(N)/log10(2)
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Activity 2.1 Do problems 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11 and 13 at the end of Tanenbaum Chapter 2 (pages 170 to 171). |
2.1 Framing and error-correction
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Recommended Reading Read Tanenbaum Chapter 3, sections 3.1 and 3.2 (pages 175 to 190). Do not worry too much about the mathematics on pages 188 onwards but try to grasp the general principle of what is going on. |
There is a telling point made at the very end of this reading:
"undetected errors are much more common than had been previously thought".
So do not put all your faith in error-detection.
The remainder of Tanenbaum chapter 3 will not be dealt with here in this Unit. However, from time to time various protocol concepts will arise which are explained in detail there; thus have the book available as a resource to dip into.