Data Communication and Computer Networking Assignment No: 01

1. Discuss the following:

♦ Evolution of Data Communication
♦ Elements of Data Communication System

Ans. Evolution of Data Communication: The 1970s and 1980s saw a merger of the fields of
computer science and data communications which has profoundly changed the technology and
products. The revolutionary merger has resulted in a new combined computer- communications
industry.
The computer communications revolution has lead to the following significant results:
 There is no fundamental difference between data processing (computers) and data
communications (transmission and switching equipment).
 There are no fundamental differences among data, voice and video communications.
 The distinction among single- processor computer, multiprocessor computer, local
network, metropolitan network, and long- haul network has blurred.
The major effect of these trends is as follows:
 There has been a growing overlap of the computer and communications industries,
from component fabrication to system integration.
 The development of integrated systems that transmit and process all types of data
and information.
 Both the technology and the technical standards organizations are driving toward
integrated public systems that make virtually a data and information sources around
the world easily and uniformly accessible.
Elements of Data Communication system: The key elements of the data communication system
are as follows:
 Source: This device generates the data to be transmitted; examples are telephones and
personal computers.
 Transmitter: Usually, the data generated by a source system are not transmitted directly in
the form in which they were generated. Rather, a transmitter transforms and encodes the
information in such a way as to produce electro- magnetic signals that can be transmitted
across some sort of transmission system.
2. Explain the following:
♦ Analog and Data Transmission
♦ Transmission Impairments
Ans. Analog and Data Transmission: In transmitting data from a source to a destination, one
must be concerned with the nature of data, actual physical means used to propagate the data, and
what processing or adjustments may be required along the way to assure that the received data are
intelligible. For all of these considerations, the crucial point is whether we are dealing with analog or
digitals entities.
The terms analog and digital correspond, roughly, to continuous and discrete, respectively. These
two terms are used frequently in data communications in at least three contexts:
• Data
• Signaling
• Transmission
Transmission Impairments: With any communications system, the signal that is received
may differ from the signal that is transmitted due to various transmission impairments. For analog
signals, these impairments can degrade the signal quality. For digital signals; bit errors may be
introduced: A binary 1 is transformed into a binary 0 and vice versa.
3. Explain the following with respect to Transmission Media:
♦ Guided Transmission Media
♦ Un-Guided or Wireless Transmission Media
Ans. Guided Transmission Media: Guided media provide a physical path along which the
signals are propagated. With guided media, the waves are guided along a solid medium; these
include copper twisted pair, copper coaxial cable, and optical fiber.
Unguided or Wireless Transmission Media: Unguided media employ an antenna for
transmitting through air, vacuum, or water. The atmosphere and outer space are examples of
unguided media, which provide a means of transmitting electromagnetic signal but do not guide
them; this form of transmission is usually referred as wireless transmission. Unguided transmission
techniques commonly used for information communications included broadcast radio, terrestrial
microwave, and satellite. Infrared transmission is used in some LAN applications.

4. Explain the following with respect to Data Encoding:

♦ Digital Signaling of Digital Data
♦ Digital Signal Encoding Techniques
Ans. Digital Signaling of Digital Data: Signals consists of a two voltage levels to represent the
two binary values. Digital data are encoded to produce a digital signal with desired properties.
Digital Signaling Encoding Techniques: Digital signal represents a stream of 1s and 0s,
which may represent digital data or may be an encoding of analog data. Signal is propagated
through repeaters; at each repeater, stream of 1s and 0s is recovered from inbound signal and
used to generate a new outbound signal.
5. Discuss the following:
♦ Uses of Computer Networks
 ♦ Differentiate between Distributed Systems and Computer Networks
♦ Components of Computer Network
Ans. Uses of Computer Networks: Networking is the best way to achieve the distribution or
exchange of information, which is very important for any group activity to function effectively and
efficiently. The main advantages of computer networks are listed below:
• Networks allow more efficient management of resources.
• Networks help keep information reliable and up-to-date.
• Networks help speed up data sharing.
• Networks allow workgroups to communicate more efficiently.
• Networks help in providing business service to their clients more efficiently.
Computer networks provide following services besides travel reservations and financial
transactions:
• They provide shared access to information, such as airline flight status or account
balances.
• They permit the movement of the current data, such as flight status updates, or
financial transfers in a most reliable manner.
Difference between Distributed Systems and Computer Networks: The key distinction
between a computer network and a distributed system is that in a distributed system, a collection of
independent computers appears to its user as single coherent system. Usually it has a single model
or paradigm that it presents to the users. Often a layer of software on top of the operating system,
called middleware, is responsible for implementing this model. A well- known example of a
distributed system is the World Wide Web, in which everything looks like a document (web page).
In a computer network, this coherence model, and software are absent. Users are exposed
to the actual machines. Without any attempt by the systems to make the machines look and act in a
coherent way. If the machines have different hardware and different operating systems, that is fully
visible to the users. If a user wants to run a program on a remote machine, he has to log onto that
machine and run it there.
Components of Computer Networks: A network is a combination of different components.
The most essential components of a simple network are:
• Servers: Servers are the faster computers to run various software’s, store and process
information and to provide a human interface for the users to be able to use the
networked computers.
• Nodes: Nodes are the computers on the network which are provided to the users to
carry out their tasks using the network.
• Workstation: A node which is more powerful and can handle local information
processing or graphics processing is called a workstation.
 • LAN cables: This is the medium over which the information travels from computer to
computer.
• Network Operating System Software: The network requires some software to control
all the information transfer activity on the network, like the traffic police to control the
traffic.
• LAN software: On the network, each computer is called a node or a workstation unless
there are certain computers designed as servers. LAN cables connect all the nodes and
servers together to form the network. In addition to its local disk operating system, each
node requires networking software that enables the nodes to communicate with the
servers.
• Network Interface Card: Each computer contains a network interface card. This card is
used to connect the cables to the computers.
6. Discuss the following:
♦ Network Access Technologies
♦ Networking Devices
♦ X.25 and Frame Relay

Ans. Network Access Technologies: There are various types of technologies in use today for
networking like Token Ring Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) and
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). However Ethernet is the most popular LAN technology in use
today covering more than 85% of the networks.
Networking Devices: The mainly used networking devices are as follows:
• Repeaters
• Hubs
• Bridges
• Switches
• Routers
• Gateways
All of these devices are in common use, but they all differ in subtle and not so-subtle ways.
All these devices operate in different layers.
X.25: X.25 is an example of a connection- oriented network. It was the firs public data
network. It was deployed in the 1970s at a time when telephone service was a monopoly
everywhere and the telephone company in each country expected to have their own data networks.
To use x.25, a computer first establishes a connection to the remote computer. X.25 standard
specifies an interface between a host system and a packet switching network. This standard is
almost universally used for interfacing to packet switching networks and is employed for packet
switching in ISDN.
Frame Relay: In the 1980s, the x.25 networks were largely replaced by a new kind of
network called frame relay. The essence of frame relay is that it is a connection- oriented network
with no error control and no flow control. Because it was connection- oriented, packets were
delivered in order. The properties of in-order delivery, no error control, and no flow control make
frame relay akin to a wide area LAN.
Data Communication and Computer Assignment No: 02

1. Explain the following:

♦ Time – Domain Vs Frequency Domain
♦ Spectrum, Bandwidth and Data Rate
Ans. Time – Domain Vs Frequency Domain: In the data communication, the electromagnetic
waves are used as a means to transmit data. A signal is generated by the transmitter and
transmitted over a medium. The signal is a function of time, but it can also be expressed as a
function of frequency; that is, the signal consists of components of different frequencies. It must
turns out that the frequency- domain view of a signal is more important to an understanding of data
transmission than a time- domain view.
Spectrum: The spectrum of a signal is the range of frequencies that it contains. For the
signal of figure, the spectrum extends from f to 3f.
Bandwidth: Most of energy in the signal is contained in a relatively narrow band of
frequencies. This band is called as bandwidth. The absolute bandwidth of a signal is the width of
the spectrum.
Data Rate: The amount of data transferred in one direction over a link divided by the time
taken to transfer it, usually expressed in bits per second (bps), bytes per second (Bps) or baud. The
link may be anything from an interface to a hard disk to a radio transmission from a satellite.
2. Explain the following:
♦ Transmission Media
♦ Selection of Transmission Media
♦ EM Spectrum
Ans. Transmission Media: In a data transmission system, the transmission medium is the
physical path between transmitter and receiver. The transmission media that are used to convey
information can be classified as below:
 Guided Media
 Unguided Media
Selection of Transmission Media: The characteristics and quality of a data transmission
are determined both by the characteristics of the medium and the characteristics of the signal. In
the case of guided media, the medium itself is more important in determining the limitations of
transmission. For unguided media, the bandwidth of the signal produced by the transmitting
antenna is more important than the medium is determining transmission characteristics.
EM Spectrum: The figure depicts the electromagnetic spectrum and indicates the
frequencies at which various guided media and unguided transmission techniques operate.
102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 1010 1011 1012 1013 1014 1015
ELF VF VLF LF MF HF VHF UHF SHF EHF
Power and Radio: radios Microwave Infrared Visible
telephone and televisions, Radar Lasers light
rotating Electronic tubes, Microwave Guided
generators Integrated antenna missiles
Musical circuits Magnetrons Rangefinders
instruments Twisted
Voice Pair Terrestrial Optical
microphone Coaxial Cable and satellite Fiber
FM radio transmission
AM radio and TV

106 105 104 103 102 101 100 10-1 10-2 10-3 10-4 10-5 10-6
Wavelength in space (meters)
ELF=Extremely Low Frequency MF= Medium Frequency UHF= Ultra High Frequency
VF= Voice Frequency HF= High Frequency SHF= Super High Frequency
VLF= Very Low Frequency VHF= Very High Frequency EHF= Extremely High Frequency
LF= Low Frequency
Fig. Electromagnetic spectrum for Telecommunications
3. Explain the following:
♦ Digital Signatures
♦ Firewalls
♦ E-Mail and Web Security
Ans. Digital Signatures:-the authenticity of many legal, financial, and other documents is
determined by the presence or absence of an authorized handwritten signature and photocopies do
not count. Basically what is needed is a system by which one party can send a signed message to
another party in such a way that the following conditions hold.
• The receiver can verify the claimed identity of the sender.

• The sender can’t later repudiate the contents of bathe massage.

• The receiver can’t possibly have concocted the message himself.

The first requirement is needed in financial system. In other words the bank has to authenticate the
customer (and the customer has to authenticate the bank).the second requirement is need to
protect the bank against fraud. The party to a contract can later deny having signed it is called non
repudiation.
Firewalls:--the ability to connect any computer, anywhere to any other computer anywhere is a
mixed blessing. In addition to the danger of information lacking out there is also a danger of
information leaking in. In particular, viruses, worms and other digital pests can breach security,
destroy valuable data and vast large amount of administrator’s time trying to clean up the mess the
leave. Firewalls are just a modern adaptation of that old medieval security standby. Digging a deep
moat around your castle. A company have many LANs connected in arbitrary ways, but all traffic to
or from the company is forced through an electronic drawbridge. the firewall in this configuration
has two components: two routers that do packet filtering and an application gateway. Most likely the
packet filter on the inside LAN checks out going packets and the one on the outside LAN checks
incoming packets.
E-mail and Web Security:--When an e-mail message is sent between two distant sites, it will
generally transit dozens of machines on the way. Many people would like to be able to send E-mail
that can be read by the intended recipient and no one else: not their boss and not even their
government. this desire has stimulated several people and groups to apply the cryptographic
principles we studied earlier to e-mail to produce secure e-mail. PGP-Pretty is a complete e-mail
security package that provides privacy, authentication, digital signatures and compression all in an
easy-to-use form. PEM-Privacy Enhanced mail is an official internet standard. S/MIME is IETF’s
next venture into email security. it is described in RFCs2632 through 2643.We have just studied two
important areas where securing is needed COMMUNICATION and E-mail.

4. Explain the following with respect to Data Encoding:

♦ Analog Signaling of Digital Data
♦ Encoding / Modulation Techniques
Ans. Analog Signaling of Digital Data: A modem converts digital data to an analog signal so
that it can be transmitted over an analog line. The basic techniques are amplitude shift keying
(ASK), frequency shift keying (FSK), and phase shift keying (PSK). All involve altering one or more
characteristics of a carrier frequency to represent binary data. Some transmission media, such as
optical fiber and unguided media will only propagate analog signals. Digital data are encoded using
a modem to produce analog signals.
Encoding/ Modulation Techniques: we mentioned that modulation involves operation on
one or more of the three characteristics of a carrier signal: amplitude, frequency, and phase. There
are three basic encoding or modulation techniques for transforming digital data into analog signals
as illustrated in the figure.
• Amplitude shift keying
• Frequency shift keying
 • Phase shift keying
In ASK the two binary values are represented by two different amplitude of the carrier frequency.
Commonly one of the amplitude is zero; that is one binary digit is represented by the presence at
constant amplitude of the carrier the other by the absence of the carrier. FSK for full duplex
operation over a voice grade line. the bell system 108 series modems and frequency range 300 to
3400 Hz.FSK is less susceptible to error than ASK. On voice grade lines it is typically used up to
1200 bps.In PSK the phase of carrier signal is represent data .A binary 0 is represented by sending
a burst of the same phase as the previous signal burst sent.

5. Discuss the following:

♦ Internet and Intranet
♦ Internet Usage and Applications
Ans. Internet and Intranet:-The fulfillment of this desire requires that different and frequently
incompatible networks be connected some time by means of machine called gateways to make the
connection and provide the necessary translation, both in terms of hardware and software. A
collection of interconnected networks is called an internet work or internet. Some companies have
interconnected all their existing internal networks often using the same technology as the internet.
these are called as intranets. the intranet are typically accessible only within the company but
otherwise work the same way as the internet.
Internet Usage and Applications:-Traditional uses of the internet and its predecessors:
• E-mail:-the ability to compose send and receive electronic mail has been around since the
early days of the ARPANET and is enormously popular.
• News:-Newsgroups are specialized forums in which users with a common interest can
exchange message.
• Remote login:-Using the telnet, rlogin or ssh programs users anywhere on the internet can
logon to any other machine on which they have an a account.
• File transfer:-Using the FTP program users can copy files from one machine pon the internet
to another. Vast number of articles, databases and other information are available this way.
ISPs (internet service providers) offer individual users at home
the ability to call up one of there machine and connect to internet thus gaining access to e-mail.

6. Discuss the following:

♦ Substitution Ciphers
♦ Transposition Ciphers
Ans. Substitution Ciphers:-Encryption methods have historically been divided into two
categories: In a substitution cipher each letter or group of letter is replaced by another letter or
group of letters to disguise it. One of the oldest known as caser cipher. In this method a becomes d,
b becomes e. A slight generalization of the Caesar cipher allows the cipher text alphabets to be
shifted by k letter, instead of always 3.
Transposition Ciphers:- In cryptography, a transposition cipher is a method of encryption
by which the positions held by units of plaintext (which are commonly characters or groups of
characters) are shifted according to a regular system, so that the ciphertext constitutes a
permutation of the plaintext. That is, the order of the units is changed. Mathematically a
bijective function is used on the characters' positions to encrypt and an inverse function to
decrypt.