DCN286 Week 1 Lecture 1 notes

Ryan Lockhart

Data communication – get many devices to communicate with each other across a network

A language, a medium, sound waves, “us”, rules (etiquette), lack of interference – required for verbal
communication

Language – Encoding method (determined by the protocol) (taking a code like hex or octal and
transforming it into binary) ASCII is a method of converting keyboard characters to binary)

Both sides need to use the same encoding method

Medium – Copper wires/cables, fiber, wireless (radio waves), Radio FM (Frequency Modulation) is the
encoding method for radio signals to travel AM (Amplitude Modulation)

Sound waves – Voltage (high/low for copper), fiber (light), AM/FM (Radio signals)

Modulation = manipulating an attribute of the wave. Radio waves degrade over distance

Short waves and long waves to represent 0s and 1s

The foundation of everything is binary – on or off

Us – sender and receiver: devices.

Rules – Protocols (How do we maintain all these thousands of different protocols working together?)

Different sources for these protocols (different people that create and maintain them)

Very interesting!

Interference – Noise (term) – Different kinds of noise: EMI (Electromagnetic Interference)

When you move an electron through a wire you get a electricity and as a byproduct you get
electromagnetic waves, and as they move away, they can interfere with other devices

The coolest example is induction (induction generators) for example dams producing this kind of energy
by moving water

Generating EM fields to move electrons in another wire (The power of falling gravity moving water in
order to move the turbines at the dam to produce electricity)

“Bad things happen” – Bit errors – May cause data corruption

In networking, induction = bad

Twisted pair cable NOT ethernet cable

8 wires inside a twisted pair cable – A cable is a bundle of wires

They are twisted so the data is sent exactly the same to the pairs so they create the same magnetic field
in order to cancel each other’s magnetic field (EM noise/cross-talk/internal noise) Induction = crosstalk

Near-end crosstalk (on the RJ-45 connectors) aka NEXT Near End X Talk

Building a network for a factory floor (heavily generating interference)

Expensive solution – shielded twisted pairs

Cheap solution – use tinfoil as wallpaper on the wall that’s facing the factory floor

Attenuation (absorbing the energy potential) Ohms (electron resistance) through resistance you lose
electricity as it is converted to heat and eventually it`ll just taper off until the electrical signals are dead

It’s a measurement of distance (how long the cable should run for?)

Attenuation length of a cable

Not supposed to run twisted pair cables for more than 100 meters

Devices to boost up the signal (repeaters or amplifiers)

Switch used to be called multiport bridges and hubs multiport repeaters

Computer > Wire > Wiring Closet > Switch

LAN and WAN (differentiated by physical distance) MAN (metropolitan – connect multiple buildings
together in the same city)

PAN (Personal Area Network) – IoT (personal devices sending info through your skin to comm. With each
other)

Telecom companies invest money to build a network infrastructure for a WAN

3 tiers for Telecom companies

T1 – AT&T (satellites n shit) (global infrastructure)

T2 – Bell, Rogers (national infrastructure)

T3 – Your local guy

The internet is owned by a company called ICANN

They control the root DNS server (all .com domains etc)

Two different types of topology

Logical topology (no sense of scale or distance, more like a relationship between devices)

Physical topology (how far apart are they, how are we gonna place the devices)

PoE (Power over Ethernet) – Get ethernet over power outlets (for security cameras, Wireless Access
Points), very commonly used for VoIP phones – using twisted pairs to send data AND power
Switches – 8 to 128 (not a rule) ports

Stacking switches – many switches connected logically (thought as one big device)

Star topologies are the most common in LANs

Point-to-point are the most common among WANs