TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK ALTERNATIVES

Telecommunication is highly technical, rapidly changing field of information systems technology. Most business professionals do not need a detailed knowledge of its technical characteristics. Many companies are managing their use of network bandwidth to cut costs and provide more telecommunications capacity for their high priority business applications, and avoid buying more

KIM ROSS is CIO of Nielsen Media Research

NETWORK BANDWIDTH MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES

MONITORING AND ENFORCING

STREAMLININ G NETWORKS

CENTRALIZIN G OPERATIONS

TESTING AND TUNING APPLICATION S

KEY TELECOMMUNICTION NETWORK COMPONENTS AND ALTERNATIVES

Network Alternatives Networks Examples of Alternatives
Internet, intranet, extranet, wide area, local area, client/server, network computing, peer-to-peer

Media

Twisted-pair wire, coaxial cable, fiber optics, microwave radio, communications satellites, cellular and PCS systems, wireless mobile, and LAN systems
Modem, multiplexers, switches, routers, hubs, gateways, front-end processors, private branch exchanges Network operating system, telecommunications, monitors, Web browsers, middle ware

Processors

Software

Channels

Analog/digital, switched/non switched, circuit/message/packet/cell switching, bandwidth alternatives

Star, ring, and bus topology, OSI

Topology/architecture

TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK MODELS

FIVE (5) BASIC CATEGORIES

TERMINALS

TELECOMMUNICATION S CHANNELS

TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROCESSORS

COMPUTERS

TELECOMMUNICATIONS CONTROL AND SOFTWARE

TYPS OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS

WIDE AREA NETWORKS

LOCAL AREA NETWORKS

VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK

A LOCAL AREA NETWORK (LAN)

CLIENT/SERVER

VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK

NETWORK COMPUTING

PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS ARCHITECTURE WITH A DIRECTORY OF ALL PEERS ON A CENTRAL SERVER

A PURE PEER-TO-PEER NETWORK ARCHITECTURE WITH NO CENTRAL DIRECTORY SERVER

TELECOMMUNICATIONS MEDIA

Twisted-pair wire

Coaxial cable

Fiber optics

WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES

Communications Satellite

Ericsson Smartphone

Bob Evans Farms Inc.

Cellular and PCS systems

Wireless LAN

The Wireless Web