Page 1 COMP2211-WE01

Examination Paper
Examination Session: Year: Exam Code:

May/June 2020 COMP2211-WE01

Title: Networks and Systems

Time Allowed: 2 hours

Additional Material provided:

Materials Permitted:

Calculators Permitted: Yes Models Permitted: Casio FX-83 GTPLUS, Casio

FX-85GTPLUS, Casio FX83-GTX or Casio FX85-
GTX
Visiting Students may use dictionaries: Yes

Instructions to Candidates: Answer ALL questions.

Please answer each question in a separate answer booklet.

Revision:
Page 2 of 6 COMP2211-WE01

Section A Networks
(Dr Donald Sturgeon)

Question 1

(a) The following 11-bit datastream is encoded using a Hamming Code, and
contains exactly one bit error. Indicate which bits of the datastream are
parity bits, then use these to identify and correct the error.
10111101111 [5 Marks]

(b) Define “broadcasting” and “flooding” as they apply to packet switched

networks, and explain the difference between the two. Name and describe
an algorithm which routers can use to efficiently broadcast a packet of
data to all routers on a network, given only the knowledge that they have
a preferred link for each router. [5 Marks]

(c) Define Distance Vector Routing, Link State Routing, and the count to
infinity problem. Explain why the count to infinity problem only occurs
when using one of these two routing algorithms. [5 Marks]

(d) i. Explain a common problem that can arise in decoding a signal trans-
mitted using Non Return to Zero (NRZ) encoding when long se-
quences of consecutive bits of the same value are transmitted by
varying voltage on a single line. [2 Marks]
ii. Name and describe one alternative encoding which might be used
to avoid this problem from occurring, and state a limitation of the
approach. [3 Marks]

(e) In the example below, the four stations A, B, C, D are sharing a channel
using CDMA. When the sequence of signals
 
S = +2 +2 0 +2 0 +2 −4 0

is observed on the channel, for each station A, B, C, D state whether the

station transmitted 0, 1, or nothing (i.e. no transmission), showing how
you arrived at this result.

continued
Page 3 of 6 COMP2211-WE01

Chip sequences:
 
A = +1 +1 +1 −1 −1 +1 −1 −1
 
B = +1 +1 −1 +1 −1 −1 −1 +1
 
C = +1 −1 +1 −1 −1 −1 +1 +1
 
D = +1 −1 +1 +1 +1 +1 −1 +1

[5 Marks]

End of Section A continued

Page 4 of 6 COMP2211-WE01

Section B Cyber Security

(Dr Chris Willcocks)

Question 2

(a) How does onion routing work, and what is it used for? [4 Marks]

(b) What is a canary value, and what is it used for? Explain how it works.
[5 Marks]

(c) Explain two of the most popular scenarios where professional criminal hack-
ers can earn £10k in a few days. Your answers should detail how money
is distributed, and how the criminals avoid getting caught. [8 Marks]

(d) List eight areas that a software company of 100 employees can spend its
annual budget of £100k on, in order to improve and maintain their cyber
security and protect their digital assets. [8 Marks]

End of Section B continued

Page 5 of 6 COMP2211-WE01

Section C Compiler Design

(Dr Maximilien Gadouleau)

Question 3

(a) Provide the names of the three main phases of the analysis part of a
compiler (or front end) and give a brief description of what each of these
parts is responsible for. [12 Marks]

(b) Construct the leftmost derivation and the rightmost derivation of the string
(x ∨ y) ∧ z in the following grammar:

E → E∨T | T
T → T ∧F | F
F → (E) | x | y | z

[8 Marks]

(c) Demonstrate with a simple example and using diagrams that the following
grammar is ambiguous:

S → abS | aaS | abbS | baaS | ε

[5 Marks]

End of Section C continued

Page 6 of 6 COMP2211-WE01

Section D Distributed Systems

(Dr Frederick Li)

Question 4

(a) Define location transparency and relocation transparency. Explain why

they are critical design requirements of a distributed system. [4 Marks]

(b) What is Phantom deadlock? Explain the importance of linearizability to

deadlock detection in a distributed system. [4 Marks]

(c) Explain how the existence of Byzantine faults affects the design of: (1)
active and (2) passive replication based distributed systems. [5 Marks]

(d) Suppose a distributed system comprises of geographically dispersed compo-

nents, which are designed to work together but are suffering from large net-
work latency for communication. Suggest a suitable checkpointing mech-
anism to support backward error recovery in such a system. Justify your
answer. [4 Marks]

(e) On Black Friday, an online shopping system has many of its servers being
overloaded by a huge number of shopping transactions.

i. Suggest a suitable load distributing algorithm to alleviate the server

overload problem. Justify your answer. [4 Marks]
ii. Explain what task routing mechanism should be employed to support
your suggested load distributing algorithm. [4 Marks]

END OF PAPER