Week Two: Cabling and Topology

The discussion topic for week two in very important in that it focused on “whether there are too many standards organizations attempting to regulate the networking field, and if some form of consultation is necessary for governmental of larger international bodies should be formed in respective to manage standards.”

The purpose of Standards organizations is set-up the blueprints for reliable, interoperable communications among various networks throughout the universe, and the top leading standards organizations as:

3^rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) – the purpose for 3PP is to develop protocols that are used for mobile telecommunications. 3PP is well known for its evolution and maintenance of Global System for Mobile (GSM), 2G, and 2.5G standards, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Enhanced Data-rate for GSM Evolution (EDGE), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), 3G standards, High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), and HSPA+.

International Telecommunication Union (UTI) – UTI was founded in 1865 for the purpose of processing international connectivity in networks communications, and “agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies.”

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) – the IEEE is considered as the world largest technical bodies of professional organizations that is full dedicated to the advancement of technology to benefit the humankind.

European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) – the ETSI is the European Standards Organization (ESO) that is responsible for recognizing “standards body dealing with telecommunications, broadcasting and other electronic communications networks and services.”

This is just to name a few of the governing bodies of standards organizations that are responsible for implementing and enforcing that all networks and communications devices are being developed according to regulations. Few of these organizations founded long before you and I were even born, stay operated affectively.

There can be a global catastrophic to computer network and communication security if standards are not met. What this does is that companies then can produce and sell just about network and communication devices that may or may not provide security and protections. If you were to use a network device on your network that didn’t follow standards protocol, your network become vulnerable for cyber-attack.

Speaking of network, network topologies represented the design engineering of a computer network. The five network topologies stay use today are:

Bus Topology – this network is designed to utilize one connection cable for all the computer on the network in a line. Bus used termination at each end of the connection to prevent data or single lose. A single lose can courses network down-time.

Ring Topology – unlike Bus, “the Ring Topology network connected all computers on the network with a ring of wire.”. Data or single in the Ring network get circulated in a cycle liked, therefore, a brake or damage to the wire, can prevent data or single from circulating to all computers on the network.

Star Topology – in this network design, a central device such as Hub or Switch is used to connect all the computers on the network. If there were to be damage (broken cable) to a wire connecting a workstation, the rest of the computers will not be affected because each computer is connected to the central device which makes this network design better then both Bus and Star Topologies.

Hybrid Topology – this topology is a combination of various topologies, such as the bus topology, ring topology, and mash topology.

Mash Topology – all computer and network devices within the mash topology network are interconnected. Mash topology can be use for wireless networks (requiring no wire connection, instead, connection by radio wave). There are two types of mash: full mash and partially connected mash.

Each and all devices and components (cables, hub, switch, routers, modems, etc.) that are used to build these network topologies are designed by various manufactures and each of those manufacture must follow the standards guideline to safeguard the network.