Unit -05

•
Data Communication

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 Communication Process,

• The term communication process refers to

the exchange of information (a message)
between two or more people.

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• 1. Message: It is the information or data to
be communicated. It can consist of text,
numbers, pictures, sound or video or any
combination of these.
• 2. Sender: It is the device/computer that
generates and sends that message.

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• 3. Receiver: It is the device or computer that receives
the message. The location of receiver computer is
generally different from the sender computer.

• 4. Medium: It is the channel or physical path through

which the message is carried from sender to the
receiver. The medium can be wired like twisted pair wire,
coaxial cable, fiber-optic cable or wireless like laser,
radio waves, and microwaves.

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 Types of Data Communication? /Data
transmission mode
Transmission mode means transferring of data between two
devices. It is also called communication mode. These modes direct
the direction of flow of information. There are three types of
transmission mode. They are :
•Simplex Mode
•Half duplex Mode
•Full duplex Mode

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 SIMPLEX Mode

• In this type of transmission mode data can

be sent only through one direction i.e.
communication is unidirectional. We cannot
send a message back to the sender.
Unidirectional communication is done in
Simplex Systems.
• Examples of simplex Mode is loudspeaker,
television broadcasting, remote, keyboard
and monitor etc.
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 half duplex

• In half duplex system we can send data in both

directions but it is done one at a time that is when
the sender is sending the data then at that time we
can’t send the sender our message. The data is
sent in one direction.
Example of half duplex is a walkie- talkie in which
message is sent one at a time and messages are sent
in both the directions.

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 full duplex

In full duplex system we can send data in both

directions as it is bidirectional. Data can be sent in
both directions simultaneously. We can send as well
as we receive the data.

Example of Full Duplex is a Telephone Network in which

there is communication between two persons by a telephone
line, through which both can talk and listen at the same time.

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 Computer network

• A computer network is a set

of computers connected together for the
purpose of sharing resources. The most
common resource shared today is
connection to the Internet. Other shared
resources can include a printer or a file
server.

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 Uses of Computer Network / Advantages

• File sharing: Have you ever needed to access a file stored

on another computer? A network makes it easy for everyone to access
the same file.

• Printer sharing: If you use a computer, chances are

you also use a printer. With a network, several computers
can share the same printer.

• Communication and collaboration: It's hard

for people to work together if no one knows what other one
is doing. A network allows employees to share files, view
other people's work, and exchange ideas more efficiently.

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• Data protection: A network makes it easier to
back up all of your company's data on an offsite server
• Person-to-person communication:
• Electronic mails or emails for everyone. Emails may
contain digitized voice, pictures, moving TV and video
images (and even smell !).
• Real-time video conferencing and virtual meeting
environments, allow remote users to communicate with
no delay, possibly seeing and hearing each others as
well.

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• Business Applications: As resourse sharing an network with 2 client and 1
server
• Access to remote information:
• Home reservations for airplanes, trains, hotels, restaurants, theaters, and so on,
anywhere in the world with instant confirmation.
• Online banking and shopping.
• On-line and personalized electronic newspapers, journals, and libraries.
• Access to WWW (World Wide Web) which contains information about many
topics.
• Interactive entertainment:
• Video on demand (the killer application): the user can select any movie or TV
program ever made, in any country, and have it displayed on his screen instantly.
• Live and interactive TV: audience may participate in quiz shows, and so on.

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 Categories/Types of Networks

• There are many ways in which different

networks can be classified, such as their size,
capabilities and the geographical distance they
cover.. Different types of networks provide
different services, and require different things to
work properly.

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 Types of Networks

• Local-area network (LAN) -LAN

networks connect computers together over
relatively small distances, such as within a
single building or within a small group of
buildings.

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• A LAN is used to connect the computers
 and other network devices so that the
devices can communicate with each other
to share the resources. The resources to
be shared can be a hardware device like 
printer,

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• software like an application program or
data. The size of LAN is usually small. The
various devices in LAN are connected to
central devices called Hub or Switch using
a cable.

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 Advantages of LAN

• Resource Sharing: Computer resources like printers,

modems, DVD-ROM drives and hard disks can be
shared with the help of local area networks. This reduces
cost and hardware purchases.
• Software Applications Sharing: It is cheaper to use
same software over network instead of purchasing
separate licensed software for each client a network.
• Centralized Data: The data of all network users can be
saved on hard disk of the server computer. This will help
users to use any workstation in a network to access their
data. Because data is not stored on workstations locally.
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 Disadvantages of LAN

• Data Security Threat: Unauthorised users can access important

data of an organization if centralized data repository is not secured
properly by the LAN administrator.
• Covers Limited Area: Local Area Network covers a small area like
one office, one building or a group of nearby buildings.
• Privacy Violations: The LAN administrator has the rights to check
personal data files of each and every LAN user. Moreover he can
check the internet history and computer use history of the LAN user.

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 Types of Networks

• Wide-area network (WAN) A network that

connects two or more local-area networks over a
potentially large geographic distance
 The Internet is a WAN, and
connects computers all around the world
together.
WAN can be private or it can be public leased
network.

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 Advantages of WAN

• Covers a large geographical area so long

distance business can connect on the one
network.
• Shares software and resources with
connecting workstations.
• Messages can be sent very quickly to
anyone else on the network. These
messages can have picture, sounds or data
included with them(called attachments).
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 Disadvantages of WAN

• Need a good firewall to restrict outsiders

from entering and disrupting the network.
• Setting up a network can be an expensive,
slow and complicated. The bigger the
network the more expensive it is.

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 So, who owns the Internet?

Well, nobody does. No single person or

company owns the Internet or even
controls it entirely. As a wide-area
network, it is made up of many smaller
networks. These smaller networks are
often owned and managed by a person or
organization.

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 Types of Networks

• Metropolitan-area network (MAN)

Metropolitan Area Network – This is a
network which is larger than a LAN but
smaller than a WAN, and incorporates
elements of both. It typically spans a town
or city and is owned by a single person or
company, such as a local council or a
large company.
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 Characteristics of MAN

• It generally covers towns and

Communication medium used for MAN are
optical fibers, cables etc.
• Data rates adequate for distributed
computing applications.

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• Campus Area Network - A network
spanning multiple LANs but smaller than a
MAN, such as on a university or local
business campus.
• Storage Area Network - Connects servers
to data storage devices through a
technology like Fibre Channel.

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 Data Transmission Media

• Transmission media is a pathway that

carries the information from sender to
receiver. We use different types of cables
or waves to transmit data. Data is
transmitted normally through electrical or
electromagnetic signals.

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 Data Transmission Speed

• In computer networks, bandwidth is used as a

synonym for data transfer rate, Network
bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per
second (bps); modern networks typically have
speeds measured in the millions of bits per
second (megabits per second, or Mbps) or
billions of bits per second (gigabits per second,
or Gbps).

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Data Transmission Media

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 Data Transmission Media

• Twisted Pair Cable

• A twisted pair cable is made of two plastic insulated
copper wires twisted together to form a single media. Out
of these two wires, only one carries actual signal and
another is used for ground reference. The twists between
wires are helpful in reducing noise (electro-magnetic
interference) and crosstalk.
• There are two types of twisted pair cables:
• Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) Cable
• Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) Cable
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UTP

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STP cables comes with twisted wire pair covered in
metal foil. This makes it more indifferent to noise and
crosstalk.

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 Coaxial Cable

• Coaxial cable has two wires of copper.

The core wire lies in the center and it is
made of solid conductor.The core is
enclosed in an insulating sheath.The
second wire is wrapped around over the
sheath and that too in turn encased by
insulator sheath.This all is covered by
plastic cover.

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Coaxial cables provide high bandwidth rates of
up to 450 mbps.
There are three categories of coax cables
namely, RG-59 (Cable TV), RG-58 (Thin
Ethernet), and RG-11 (Thick Ethernet). RG
stands for Radio Government.
Cables are connected using BNC connector and
BNC-T. BNC terminator is used to terminate the
wire at the far ends.

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• Disadvantages :
• It is expensive
• Difficult to install.
• Maintenance is expensive and difficult.

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 Wireless transmission

• Wireless transmission is a form of

unguided media. Wireless communication
involves no physical link established
between two or more devices,
communicating wirelessly. Wireless
signals are spread over in the air and are
received and interpreted by appropriate
antennas.

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 Radio Transmission

• Radio frequency is easier to generate and

because of its large wavelength it can penetrate
through walls and structures alike. Radio waves
can have wavelength from 1 mm – 100,000 km
and have frequency ranging from 3 Hz
(Extremely Low Frequency) to 300 GHz
(Extremely High Frequency). Radio frequencies
are sub-divided into six bands.

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 Microwave Transmission

• Electromagnetic waves above 100 MHz

tend to travel in a straight line and signals
over them can be sent by beaming those
waves towards one particular station.
Because Microwaves travels in straight
lines, both sender and receiver must be
aligned to be strictly in line-of-sight.

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• Microwaves can have wavelength ranging
from 1 mm – 1 meter and frequency
ranging from 300 MHz to 300 GHz.

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• Microwave antennas concentrate the
waves making a beam of itmultiple
antennas can be aligned to reach farther.
Microwaves have higher frequencies and
do not penetrate wall like obstacles.
• Microwave transmission depends highly
upon the weather conditions and the
frequency it is using.

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 Infrared

• Unguided infrared is widely used for short-

range communication. The remote
controls used on televisions, VCRs, and
stereos all use infrared communication.
They are relatively directional, cheap, and
easy to build but have a major drawback:
they do not pass through solid objects

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 Networks topologies

• Network Topology refers to layout of a

network. How different nodes in a
network are connected to each other
and how they communicate is
determined by the network's topology.

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• A network topology is the pattern in
which nodes (i.e., computers,
printers, routers or other devices) are
connected to a local area network or
other network via links (e.g., twisted
pair copper wire cable or optical fiber
cable).

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 Star Topology: 

• In a star network devices are connected to

a central computer, called a hub/Switch.
Nodes communicate across the network
by passing data through the hub.

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• Features of Star Topology
• Every node has its own dedicated
connection to the hub/switch.
• Hub acts as a repeater for data flow.
• Can be used with twisted pair, Optical
Fibre or coaxial cable.

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• Advantages of Star Topology
• Fast performance with few nodes and low network traffic.
• Hub can be upgraded easily.
• Easy to troubleshoot.
• Easy to setup and modify.
• Only that node is affected which has failed, rest of the
nodes can work smoothly.

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• Disadvantages of Star Topology
• Cost of installation is high.
• Expensive to use.
• If the hub fails then the whole network is stopped
because all the nodes depend on the hub.
• Performance is based on the hub that is it depends on its
capacity

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• Ring Topology: A local-area network (LAN
) whose topology is a ring. That is, all of
the nodes are connected in a closed loop.
Messages travel around the ring, with
each node reading those messages
addressed to it. 

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• Advantages of Ring Topology
• Transmitting network is not affected by
high traffic or by adding more nodes, as
only the nodes having tokens can transmit
data.
• Cheap to install and expand

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 Mesh Topology:

•  In a mesh network, devices are

connected with many redundant
interconnections between network nodes.
In a true mesh topology every node has a
connection to every other node in the
network.

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• Advantages of Mesh Topology
• Each connection can carry its own data
load.
• It is robust.
• Fault is diagnosed easily.
• Provides security and privacy.

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• Disadvantages of Mesh Topology
• Installation and configuration is difficult.
• Cabling cost is more.
• Bulk wiring is required.

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• Bus Topology: In networking a bus is the
central cable -- the main wire -- that
connects all devices on a local-area
network (LAN). It is also called the 
backbone.
• This is often used to describe the main
network connections composing the
Internet.  Bus networks are relatively
inexpensive and easy to install for small
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• Advantages of Bus Topology
• It is cost effective.
• Cable required is least compared to other
network topology.
• Used in small networks.
• It is easy to understand.
• Easy to expand joining two cables together.
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Disadvantages of Bus Topology
1.Cables fails then whole network fails.
2.If network traffic is heavy or nodes are
more the performance of the network
decreases.
3.Cable has a limited length.
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 HYBRID Topology

• It is two different types of topologies which

is a mixture of two or more topologies. For
example if in an office in one department
ring topology is used and in another star
topology is used, connecting these
topologies will result in Hybrid Topology
(ring topology and star topology).

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 Modem

• Modem is abbreviation for Modulator –

Demodulator. .
• Modulator converts information
 from digital mode to analog mode at the
transmitting end and demodulator converts
the same from analog to digital at
receiving end.

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 Protocol,

in computer science, a set of rules or procedures for

transmitting data between electronic devices, such as
computers. In order for computers to exchange
information, there must be a preexisting agreement as to
how the information will be structured and how each side

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will send and receive it. Without a protocol, a transmitting
computer, for example, could be sending its data in 8-bit
packets while the receiving computer might expect the
data in 16-bit packets. Protocols are established by
international or industrywide organizations. Among the
most important sets of Internet protocols
are TCP/IP, HTTPS, SMTP, and DNS.

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 TCP/IP, - Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol,

• standard Internet communications protocol
s that allow digital computers to
communicate over long distances. The
Internet is a packet-switched network, in
which information is broken down into
small packets, sent individually over many
different routes at the same time, and then
reassembled at the receiving end. 

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 HTTP

•  HyperText Transfer Protocol, standard

application-level protocol used for
exchanging files on the World Wide Web.
HTTP runs on top of the TCP/IP protocol.
Web browsers are HTTP clients that send
file requests to Web servers, which in turn
handle the requests via an HTTP service.

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 DNS

• The domain name system is the way that

internet domain names are located and
translated into internet protocol (IP)
addresses. The domain name system
maps the name people use to locate a
website to the IP address that a computer
uses to locate a website.

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 web browser

• A web browser is a software program that

allows a user to locate, access, and display
web pages. In common usage, a web browser
is usually shortened to "browser." Browsers
are used primarily for displaying and
accessing websites on the internet, as well as
other content created using languages such
as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and
Extensible Markup Language (XML).

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