//1. Communication in a Connected World Flashcards
What are the topics for this Module?
- Network types
- Data Transmission
- Bandwidth and Throughput
Networks installed in small offices, or homes and home offices, are referred to as?
Small Office / Home Office (SOHO)
SOHO networks let you share resources like?
Printers, documents, pictures, and music, between a few local users.
In business, large networks can be used to what?
Advertise and sell products, order supplies, and communicate with customers.
The internet is considered a “___________” because it is literally made up of thousands of local networks that are connected to each other.
“network of networks”
____________ Connect a few computers to each other and to the internet.
Small Home Networks
The __________ network allows computers in a home office or a remote office to connect to a corporate network, or access centralized, shared resources.
Small Office and Home Office Networks (SOHO)
__________ networks, such as those used by corporations and schools, can have many locations with hundreds or thousands of interconnected hosts.
Medium to large
The __________ is a network of networks that connects hundreds of millions of computers world-wide.
Internet / World wide networks
Can be placed in or on objects to track them or monitor sensors for many conditions.
Radio frequency identification (RFIDs)
What type of network allows computers in a home office or a remote office to connect to a corporate network?
Small office home office network
What can be placed in or on a package so that it can be tracked?
RFID Tag
What is data in its raw form?
It is the information that you input.
What type of data that you offer yourself? You realize that data is being collected to you and you agree to share it.
Volunteered data
This is the type of data that you generate by your activities. Like credit cards, which every place you used your credit card will know your location or any other info.
Inferred data
This type of data is collected by passively observing and recording events, behaviors, or phenomena as they naturally occur, without any intentional manipulation or interference.
This could include recording customer behavior in a store, monitoring wildlife in their natural habitat, or tracking website traffic patterns.
Observed data
Computers and networks only work with?
Binary digits
All of our data is stored and transmitted as?
Series of bits
Each bits can only have?
Two possible values. 1 or 0
The term bit is an abbreviation of?
Binary Digit
The _______ represents the smallest piece of data.
A bit
Computers only interprets patterns of?
bits
A bit is stored and transmitted as one of two possible discrete states like what?
This can include two directions of magnetization, two distinct voltage or current levels, two distinct levels of light intensity, or any other physical system of two discrete states. For example, a light switch can be either On or Off; in binary representation, these states would correspond to 1 and 0 respectively.
Computer manufacturers agreed to use one code called the ?
ASCII
What is the meaning of ASCII?
American Standard Code for Information Interchange
With ASCII, each character is represented by?
Eight bits.
For example:
Capital letter: A = 01000001
Number: 9 = 00111001
Special character: # = 00100011
After the data is transformed into a series of bits, it must be converted into __________ that can be sent across the network media to its destination.
signals
Refers to the physical medium on which the signals are transmitted
Media
Examples of media are?
copper wire, fiber-optic cable, and electromagnetic waves through the air.
A signal consists of or _________ that are transmitted from one connected device to another.
Electrical or Optical Pattern
What are the three common methods of signal transmission used in networks?
Electrical signals - Transmission is achieved by representing data as electrical pulses on copper wire.
Optical signals - Transmission is achieved by converting the electrical signals into light pulses.
Wireless signals - Transmission is achieved by using infrared, microwave, or radio waves through the air.
Rate of transfer is usually discussed in terms of?
Bandwidth and Throughput
Bandwidth is the _________ of a medium to carry data.
capacity
It measures the amount of data that can flow from one place to another in a given amount of time.
Digital Bandwidth
What are the 5 units of bandwidth and its abbreviation?
- Bits per second = bps
- Kilobits per second = Kbps
- Megabits per second = Mbps
- Gigabits per second = Gbps
- Terabits per second = Tbps
_________ is the measure of the transfer of bits across the media over a given period of time. However, due to a number of factors, __________ does not usually match the specified bandwidth.
Throughput
What are some factors that affect throughput?
The amount of data being sent and received over the connection
The types of data being transmitted
The latency created by the number of network devices encountered between source and destination
refers to the amount of time, including delays, for data to travel from one given point to another.
Latency
Explain this:
In an internetwork or network with multiple segments, throughput cannot be faster than the slowest link of the path from sending device to the receiving device. Even if all or most of the segments have high bandwidth, it will only take one segment in the path with lower bandwidth to create a slowdown of the throughput of the entire network.
This explanation describes the bottleneck effect in networking. Let’s break it down step by step:
- Understanding Throughput & Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that a link can transfer per second (e.g., 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps).
Throughput is the actual speed at which data travels across the network, which depends on factors like network congestion, latency, and hardware limitations.
- The Slowest Link Determines the Speed
In a network with multiple segments (or an internetwork), data travels through multiple links between the sender and receiver.
If one of those links has a lower bandwidth, it will become the bottleneck and limit the overall throughput.
This is similar to traffic on a road—even if most roads are wide highways, a single narrow street can slow down traffic for everyone.
- Example Scenario
Imagine you have a path between two devices with the following bandwidths:
Segment 1: 1 Gbps
Segment 2: 100 Mbps (Bottleneck)
Segment 3: 1 Gbps
Even though most of the network is fast (1 Gbps), the slowest link (100 Mbps) restricts the entire data transfer speed. Data cannot flow faster than this bottleneck.
- Real-World Impact
If an organization upgrades some network links but leaves others outdated (e.g., a slow ISP connection), the throughput will still be limited by the slowest part.
This is why end-to-end performance is crucial—just upgrading certain parts of a network won’t necessarily improve speeds unless all segments are optimized.
