Communication Flashcards
What is a symbol?
- A particular pattern of bits represented by a signal
What is the baud rate?
- The number of signal changes in the medium per second
- 1 Baud = 1 symbol change per second
What is the bit rate?
- The number of bits that are transmitted over the medium per second
- Measured in bits per second
- = Baud rate x no of bits per signal
What is bandwidth?
- The range of frequencies that a communication medium is capable of transmitting
- Expressed in Hertz
- Higher bandwidth results in a higher bit rate (direct relationship)
What is latency?
- The difference in time between an action being initiated and its effect being noticed
- Measured in milliseconds
- Increases with distance
What is a protocol?
- A set of rules relating to communication between devices
What is serial transmission?
- Data is sent one bit at a time over one communication line
What is parallel transmission?
- Numerous parallel communication lines send multiple bits between components simultaneously
What is crosstalk?
- Signals from the tightly packed communication lines can “leak” into others
- Causes data corruption
What is skew?
- Each of the lines have slightly different properties
- The time taken for one bit to be transferred differs slightly from line to line
- Bits sent together may not be received together
- Leads to bits from different pulses overlapping, causing a corruption of data
Evaluate serial vs parallel transmission
- Serial doesn’t suffer from skew or crosstalk
- Serial more reliable, especially over long distances
- Serial uses only one line, making it cheaper to install
What is synchronous transmission?
- A clock signal, shared by the sender and receiver, times when signals are sent
- The signals, sent at regular intervals, will be received in the same order they were sent
- Used within the busses of the processor in the fetch-execute cycle
What is asynchronous transmission?
- Start and stop bits are used to indicate the duration of transmission
- The start bit can be either a 1 or 0 and the stop bit is always the opposite
- The sender and receiver must use the same baud rate
- The sender and receiver must synchronise their clocks for the duration of transmission
What is a physical network topology?
- Refers to the actual architecture of a network
- Two types:
- Star
- Bus
What is a physical star network topology?
- Each client has its own direct connection to a central hub
- The hub receives packets for all clients and delivers them to the correct recipient
- A server can be added to the network in the same way clients are connected to the hub
What are the advantages of a physical star network topology?
- Packets are sent directly to the recipient, other clients cannot see packets that aren’t theirs
- Easy to add and remove clients
- Each cable has only one device, removing possibility of collision
- Failure of one cable does not affect performance of the rest of the network
What are the disadvantages of a physical star network topology?
- Should the central hub fail, all communication is stopped
- Expensive to install due to the amount of cable required
What is a physical bus topology?
- Connects clients to a single cable called a backbone
- A device called a terminator is placed at either end of the backbone
- There is no need for a central hub
- Server can be connected to the backbone like a client
What are the advantages of a physical bus topology?
- No central hub, reducing chances of network failure, and reduces installation cost
- Inexpensive to install, minimal length of cable required
What are the disadvantages of a physical bus topology?
- Packets are sent through the shared backbone, allowing every client on the network to see packets that aren’t intended for them
- The backbone is used by multiple clients, risk of collision
- Network is reliant on the backbone
What is a logical network topology?
- Refers to the flow of data packets within a network
What is a host?
- A device on a network that provides services
What is client-server networking?
- One or more central servers provide services to clients
- Servers are connected to the network in the same way as clients, but servers are often more powerful machines than clients
- Allows for central management of clients
- Improves network security
- Requires expertise to set up
What are the services provided by servers in a client-server network?
- File storage
- Email management
- User account management
- Print queueing