Q2: Explain Internet Infrastructure and its applications.

Ans.: Internet infrastructure is a collective term for all hardware and software
systems that constitute essential components in the operation of the Internet.
Physical transmission lines of all types, such as wired, fiber optic and microwave links,
along with routing equipment, the accompanying critical software services like
the Domain Name System (DNS), Email, website hosting, authentication and
authorization, storage systems, and database servers are considered critical Internet
components.
Internet Infrastructure consisting following five areas :

Data Centre

Network Connectivity

Computer Equipment

Storage Services

Server Applications

Data Centre
A Data Centre is basically a specialist building that has the ability to power massive
amounts of computer equipment. Typically a Data Centre would also have a very large
amount of network bandwidth to accommodate data transfer in and out of it. Data
Centres are built as highly redundant and resilient facilities at the base level you
would expect a Data Centre to have at least N+1 power (this likely comes as a local
feed from the national electrical grid as N, and a backup generator for the +1).
The Data Centre is the home for Internet Infrastructure. It is the central point of
aggregation and distribution of data and network services. These facilities tend to
include:
- 24 x 7 Staffed Operations Centre (typically called a NOC, the staff monitor all activities
of the Data Centre and ensure smooth operation as well as deal with equipment issues)
- Building Management System (the BMS normally monitors and alerts on temperature
zones, power and cooling usage, outside temp., access control and CCTV)
- Secure Access Controls (i.e biometrics on all entry and DC floor doors)
- Fire Alarm and Suppression (ie. VESDA for detection and Inergen gas for suppression)
The unit of measurement for a Data Centre is space and power. How much space will
the equipment require and how much power will it draw (which is effectively double that,
as cooling a server takes about as much power as just having the device operating).
Network

Possibly to most important foundation block of Internet Infrastructure is the Network.

Without a network connection no data can pass between Data Centres, over the
Internet, and ultimately onto your Desktop, Laptop or Mobile Handset. For the purpose
of this post, lets talk about the network infrastructure in a Data Centre, where data
passed in to computer equipment, is processed and/or stored, and passed back out of
the DC.
So you would expect at least N+1 network connectivity into a Data Centre in the form of
at least 2 Fiber Cables from telecommunications providers on diverse rings. Therefore if
one had service cut, the Data Centres network connection would not be affected. Some
data centres (Hosting365s is one) are Carrier Neutral which means a number of
carriers have a Point-Of-Presence in the facility, so the Data Centre is not affected by
any commercial or technical issues of a single carrier.
Next you would expect redundant switch gear in the Data Centre in separate racks so
again if the switch gear failed, the other set of it would simply take over and no service
interruption would be experienced.
The unit of measurement for network connectivity is megabits per second and available
megabits on the carrier connection. There may be 1 Gigabit available but the DC may
only be using, and paying for, 100 megabits. The ability to meet peak demand is
important though, so Data Centres will have a lot more connectivity available than is
required for daily operations.
Computer Equipment
Now that the two basics of Internet Infrastructure are in place the ability to power your
equipment and the ability to connect it to the Internet, the next thing is the computer
hardware that uses this to process and store the applications and data.
By computer equipment mean Servers. A Server is a more complex and high-end
version of a desktop PC. An average server might consist of 2 power supplies (for
redundancy), 8-12 RAM slots, anything from 2-10 hard drive bays and multiple
processors (not just multi-core!).
Servers are housed in Racks in a DC which are typically 42u in height. (1U is 1-unit and
a low-end server takes up just 1 of these units, other servers scale within these racks to
multiple U). Racks are normally powered by 2 PDU (Power Distribution Units) which
connect to multiple power supply units in the server.
A low-end installation may be only a single server, which is the simplest form of Internet
Infrastructure. The server would be connected to the DC Power, the Network, an OS
and other required applications installed on it. Then it is ready to power and push data
on the Internet. More complex deployments would include pools of servers, with
different applications on each one, or clusters of pools for multiple clusters with
dedicated application requirements.
The unit of measure for Servers is Processor Power and RAM. Although there is a lot
more to selecting a server such as expandability, reliability, network ports, BUS speed,
Cache size and speed. Personally I would like the unit of measure in Servers to change,

I think for buyers and users it should be rated in MIPS which is Millions of
Instructions Per Second which is effectively all that matters, and how todays Mainframe
computers (IBM BlueGene is a high end Mainframe) are measured.
Storage Services
Data Storage is a huge part of Internet Infrastructure. All those emails accessible online,
all the web pages on your favorite web site, all those photos on Facebook are all
stored on a hard drive in a DC somewhere. The basic level of storage is on-server
storage, which means the hard drives in the computer server. This can cause not just
performance and capacity issues, but also redundancy ones local storage is
inherently as prone to failure as the server it is in.
It is common to use specific storage devices such as Direct Attached Storage (a
dedicated and dumb storage appliance connected direct to your server), Network
Attached Storage (a storage device that can be accessed by multiple machines over a
network connection, and independent of the server itself) and Storage Area Networks,
which are high-end, resilient and redundant set-ups that give high performance levels
and are very scalable. A Storage Area Network may be shared among many services,
applications, servers and customers.
The unit of measure in storage is gigabytes (getting to be more commonly terabytes
now) and IOs per second (input-output read/writes the device can perform per second).
Server Applications
The final piece of underlying Internet Infrastructure is the server applications
themselves. In order for an web application to be delivered from a server, that server
requires an Operation System (typically Windows or Linux), a Web Server application
(like Apache or Microsoft IIS), and a Database (such as MySQL, MS-SQL or Oracle).
There any many more variations here, but the basic web server has these 3 things.
From here you can install blog software, an ecommerce site, your new web 2.0
application, or any Internet capable piece of software (more include Instant Messaging
Server, File Storage Server, Message Board)
More complex applications tend to have dedicated servers, or pools or servers, for
specific things like a cluster of Database Servers, or a pool of Web Server to serve
those www. page requests. These may also have more complex network setup such as
dedicated routers, load balancing and firewall devices (for traffic management and
security respectively).

Internet Infrastructures applications:

Integrated services model

Differentiated Services

Resource Reservation Protocol

Integrated Services

Many applications are sensitive to the effects of delay, jitter and packet loss.

The existing Internet architecture provides a best effort service.

All traffic is treated equally (FIFO queuing). Currently there is no mechanism for
distinguishing between delay sensitive and best effort traffic.

IPv4 TOS is not widely implemented.

Aim of IntServ WG: to specify the enhanced services needed in the Internet
service model to support the integration of real-time and classical data traffic.

Integrated Services (IntServ) expands congestion control to include reservation

of resources

Signalling through Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP)

Specification of traffic characteristics and QoS

Admission control

Policing and shaping of traffic

Scheduling of flow packets

Differentiated Service

Integrated service provides QoS; but it has problems

It doesnt scale. The routers would have to maintain state on every flow
passing through them.

Heterogeneous networks may not provide particular QoS controls or even

RSVP.

Differentiated service (DiffServ) aims to offer QoS to aggregated flows.

Resource allocation

Bandwidth broker: global view of resources.

Static provisioning: may give poor service to flows.

Signalling: use of RSVP to allocate resources.

Defined Per Hop Behaviours

Expedited Forwarding: near constant delay/throughput

Virtual Wire aggregate

Assured Forwarding: provides low loss probability for compliant traffic.

Guarantees ordering of packets in a given AF class.

Combining IntServ & DiffServ

IntServ provides fine grain control and handles dynamic allocation of resources
to flows.

DiffServ provides course grain control of flows through their aggregates.

The two together can be combined to provide scalable end to end Integrated
service, using a DiffServ region as a single element.

Controlled Load can be implemented over Assured Forwarding PHB

Guaranteed can be implemented over Expedited Forwarding PHB

Resource Reservation Protocol

The Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) is a Transport Layer protocol designed to
reserve resources across a network for an integrated services Internet. RSVP operates
over an IPv4 or IPv6 Internet Layer and provides receiver-initiated setup of resource
reservations for multicast or unicast data flows with scaling and robustness. It does not
transport application data but is similar to a control protocol, like Internet Control
Message Protocol (ICMP) or Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP). RSVP is
described in RFC 2205.
RSVP can be used by either hosts or routers to request or deliver specific levels of
quality of service (QoS) for application data streams or flows. RSVP defines how
applications place reservations and how they can relinquish the reserved resources
once the need for them has ended. RSVP operation will generally result in resources
being reserved in each node along a path.
RSVP is not a routing protocol and was designed to interoperate with current and future
routing protocols.
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