Current Trends in Information
Technology
Paul Lewis7 coo
Aims and Unit Synopsis:
To develop a knowledge of some broad
issues in computing and IT which are of
current interest and of potential benefit
and to enhance the students’ skill in
applying some of the latest technology.Learning Outcomes:
On successful completion of the unit the students should be
able to:
+ develop a web site using a web site authoring package
. use scripts to develop dynamic web pages
. understand some of the basic principles and jargon
associated with some of the following topics
information retrieval
knowledge processing
software agents
object technology
multimedia information handling
communications and networks
ESSyllabus
This course is an awareness course covering a
variety of issues in Information Technology
including such topics as :
.
.
The World Wide Web
Al and Knowledge Processing
Agents and Agent technology
Object Oriented approaches to software engineering
Information retrieval and Multimedia information handling
Communications and NetworksAssessment:
¢ The unit will be assessed completely by
coursework, for example by a project to
develop a modest but dynamic web site
relevant to some other aspect of the
degree course and an essay on a
particular topic in IT.eas
Format
* Each week we will have two lectures
followed by lab sessions in
Building 44 Room 1061Telecommunications and Networks
* World telecommunications network
Largest man-made system
Technology and services evolving
rapidly
+ Facilities for linking computers
Data volumes increasing
Data transfer rates increasing
Multimedia systems
(text/images/speech/video)
require high bandwidtham,
+ Early computers all stand alone
* Direct inter computer communications has led to
electronic mail
bulletin boards
news services
distributed computer systems
the web and information sharing
electronic funds transfer
e-medicine
e-commerce
e-shopping
e-bankingcM Heresy
At the computer system level
Initially new types of system evolved
* File systems became distributed or single systems shared by several
processors
* Facilities for file transfer
+ Facilities for remote login
* Facilities for automatic interaction between systems
+ Daemons to handle message passing over networks
Now
Ubiquitous / pervasive wirelessly interlinked computing
computers embedded into the environment eg kitchen devices with
internet connectivity/ mobile computing eg on mobiles+ Broadcast networks
* Token Ring
+ Point to point linksBroadcast Networks
e.g. Ethernet
Any computer on the net can send a message at any time
message contains destination address
Each computer checks all messages and picks up its own
messages can collide and become garbled
Sending systems detect this and rebroadcast after a random
short time
Tf traffic is high, extra collision traffic may saturate the
networkToken Ring
e.g. Fibre distributed data interface (FDDI)
Message token is passed around the ring
A computer can only transmit when it has the
token
Avoids collisions
There is performance reduction in large rings
Network fails totally if there is a breakSEAM, fess
Point to Point Links
* Only two end points involved
* Some wide area networks (WANs) are
connected this way
* One computer can typically only handle a
few linksam,
Data Transfer Rates
Transfer rate Time to transmit a 20 page report
(bits/sec) (36000 bits/page say)
300 40 mins
2,400 5 mins
9,600 1.25mins
19,600 37.5 secs
1,000,000 0.072 secs
Eg BT Broadband 512000 bits/sec
a 512*512 colour image with24 bits/pixel is 6 million bits (uncompressed)
Compression algorithms are an important keyLocal Area Networks (LANs)
* Typically used in a single laboratory or building
+ Typically run over copper wire or fibre optic cable
+ Ethernet is popular
can now run at | gigabit /sec point to point
computers typically attached to coaxial cable at tap
points but can use twisted pair or fibre optic cable
or more recently wireless
* FDDI Fibre Distributed Data Interface
less popular than ethernet
interfacing is more difficult
peak rates 200 Mbits/secLocal Area Networks (cont)
+ ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode
technology for high data rate communications
can work at rates >> 100 MBits/sec
typically used for backbone of a WAN
(Note Ethernet and FDDI are LAN technologies not appropriate for
WANs)Network Protocols
* Computers communicate over networks
using protocols which determine the format
of messages
* Protocol for the internet is TCP/IP
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet ProtocolSEAM, ree
The Internet
Loosely administered network of networks
Agreed procedures for access and
intercommunication
Internetworking uses gateways, routers and
firewalls
Gateways: convert data traffic from one
network format to another. They link LANs
to WANs and WANs to WANsRouters
¢ Decide which route through the network a
message should take to continue towards its
destination
- networks are now very complex
- many different paths between points
- routers communicate with each other
about network faults
- busy or broken routes can be avoided
19* telnet provides remote logon to distant computer
* ftp _ transfers files between computers on the internet
+ ssh and sftp (secure shell) provides encryption
phl/40% telnet penelope.ecs.soton.ac.uk
Trying 152.78.68.135...
Connected to penelope.
Escape character is '*]'.
SunOS 5.6
login:
20Host Addresses
+ Computers on the Internet have a unique address or host number.
+ Eg. 140.138.30.5
+ First six digits typically identify company or campus
* next group identifies eg a department
* last group identifies a specific computer
+ Symbolic names can be associated with these
e.g. penelope.ecs.soton.ac.uk
+ DNS Distributed name service keeps track of names and addresses
2SEAM, =
Firewalls
¢ Used to protect local networks or individual
computers by implementing access controls
to and from the internet
¢ all traffic coming in or going out must pass
through it
* only authorised traffic gets throughFirewalls
can restrict insecure network services
restrict access to certain hosts
log activity
control use of internet
limit security effort to just one or a few
computers
do not necessarily protect against viruses in
files transferred by ftpNetworks and Distributed
Computing
* Networks of computers joer
allow distributed access to = Se
resources
arenes,
* Files may be configured ae
so they may be seen by
users of several machines
sonmrenereat;Client Server Model
Applications may be split between
processors
Client/server model is a popular architecture
Client sends request to server for a
particular service
Server responds and may need to process
data, retrieve information or make requests
to other servers etc to service the requests
25Client Server Model (cont)
Clients and servers are software processes which
are really two halves of the same application
The world wide web uses a client server model
Browsers are clients... send request to web servers
for documents
Remote web server software receives the request
for a document, retrieves it and sends to client
26iock
Client Server Model
* Clients and servers may be on the same or
different machines
* One client may access many servers
* One server can serve many clientsSEAM, tie gn
Client Server Model
Popular as makes good use of networked
resources
Growth in internet has increased popularity
Single repositories of data may be
maintained more easily eg database servers
Server typically sits on a large machine and
may be relatively expensive
Client can run on a small, low cost platform
if necessarySEAM, a
Usenet and the World Wide Web
¢ Two different application which are usually
accessed via the internet
¢ Both are world wide information systems
but different in natureUsenet
Usenet is a distributed online bulletin board
(discussion group) system begun in 1979 - a set of
news groups hierarchically classified by subjects
Users can read, contribute and reply to postings on
almost every conceivable subject
Contributions are posted to the newsgroups
Newsgroups are broadcast to sites which take
them
Sites can choose which sites they take
30Usenet
« Some groups are moderated
¢ Most are open
* Newsreaders are similar to email software and
allow you to select, read and respond to postings
* Unlike a bulk email, only one copy of the usenet
feed is kept on a particular site
. now offer facilities for accessing
news groups without the need to receive the feed.
* Information in Usenet is mainly transient
31The World Wide Web
Information is less transient than in Usenet
The web is a way of sharing access to documents
and navigating between documents using
hypertext links
The web has become an attempt to organise the
bulk of the information on computers attached to
the internet in an easily accessible way
Invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 at
CERN. He has a chair here in Southampton in the
School of Electronics and Computer Science and
at MIT and is giving his inaugural next month!The WWW
The WWW is a client server system
Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox are popular
web browsers (web clients)
Web documents are held on web servers
Web documents are usually written in HTML
(HyperText Markup Language) or increasingly
XHTML (eXtensible HTML) which specifies the
document content structure, (titles, paragraphs etc)
and any links to other documents.Gig soe
Hypertext links and the WWW
Hypertext systems allow non-linear reading
of information using buttons and links for
navigation
Links in hypertext provide an association
between some text (the source anchor) and
another document (the destination of the
link)Hypertext links and the WWW
+ Each document on the Web is identified by a URL
(uniform resource locator) e.g.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/dir1/file3.htm
+ Three parts:
- transfer protocol
- internet ddress of server where document is held
- the pathname of the file containing the document
URLs are used in browsers to specify which documents to
read
URLs are used in documents to specify destinations of links
35SEAM, ti a
Some Other Aspects of the Web
¢« Documents on the web involve more effort
than emailing to a usenet newsgroup for
example. Web tends to be used for more
durable information
¢ Search engines (Google, Yahoo, AltaVista)
¢ Links from non text.. image mapsNewer Aspects (Web 2.0 ?)
Blogs or web logs - a website into which text can be added
easily (typically using web based forms) and are displayed
in reverse chronological order
Blogging: - keeping a web log
Wikis -a website that allows users to easily add and edit
content and is suitable for collaborative writing
Community tagging (Flickr)
A folksonomy is an internet based information retrieval
methodology consisting of collaborativey generated, open-
ended labels that categorize content such as Web pages,
online photographs, and Web links.
37SEAM, ree
The Semantic Web
"The Semantic Web is an extension of the
current web in which information is given
well-defined meaning, better enabling
computers and people to work in
cooperation." -- Tim Berners-Lee, James
Hendler, Ora Lassila, The Semantic Web,
Scientific American, May 2001The Semantic Web (cont)
* provides a common framework that allows data to
be shared and reused across application, enterprise
and community boundaries.
collaborative effort led by W3C with participation
from a large number of researchers and industrial
partners.
based on the Resource Description Framework
(RDF), which integrates a variety of applications
using XML for syntax and URIs for naming.The Grid
* Grid computing is a form of distributed computing that
involves coordinating and sharing computing, application,
data, storage, or network resources across dynamic and
geographically dispersed organizations.
* Grid technologies promise to change the way organizations
tackle complex computational problems. However, the
vision of large scale resource sharing is not yet a reality in
many areas
* Grid computing is an evolving area of computing, where
standards and technology are still being developed to
enable this new paradigm.
40The workshop Week 1
¢ Building 44 Room 1061