Description

You are required to self-study Chapter 12 of the recommended book (The Architecture of Computer Hardware, Systems Software & Networking: An Information Technology Approach - 4th Edition, Irv Englander - John Wiley and Sons) and answer the following questions concisely.

Please note the following: 

1. This is a group assignment. Only one member of the group has to submit the answers to Moodle. 

2. The deadline for submission is on 22nd December, 2019, 11:59PM. Late submissions will be penalized. 

3. Plagiarism is a very serious offence and it is strictly prohibited in all assignments. 

4. Clearly indicate the Group Number (as indicated in the assignment grouping document found in Moodle), Group Name, Names and Index Numbers of each group member in your submission. Only PDF submissions are accepted. 

5. Use the Moodle discussion board to raise any questions regarding the self-study assignment.

Questions (Adapted from the recommended book)

1. Discuss the trade-offs between circuit switching, packet switching, and virtual circuit switching. 

2. In the book chapter, we identify four different ‘‘addresses’’ that are normally used during the passage of a message from source to destination using TCP/IP and Ethernet. These include a ‘‘user-friendly’’ address, a port number, an IP address, and a physical address. For each ‘‘address’’, state which layer or pair of layers uses that address and explain carefully how the address is used. 

3. Describe, as precisely as you can, the tasks that must be performed by a NIC connected to a network. 

4. Suppose that you are trying to design a network that would be suitable for a company that is located in several buildings scattered around a town. No building is more than a 1/4 mile from another building, but direct wire connections between all buildings are not possible due to roads, houses, and other obstacles. Propose a network configuration for this company, and justify your proposal. 

5. Is it possible to build a network that can recognize more than one protocol? If so, explain how this could be done. 

6. Using the operations of UDP and TCP as a basis, carefully explain the difference between connectionless and connection-oriented communication. 

7. Explain the relationship between corresponding layers at the source and destination nodes of a TCP/IP communication connection