Communication Technologies

About the Tutorial

Exchange of information through the use of speech, signs or symbols is called
communication. When early humans started speaking, some 5,00,000 years ago, that was
the first mode of communication. Communication over a long distance when people who
are communicating are not in direct line of each other’s site is called telecommunication.

Invention of telephone and establishment of commercial telephony in 1878 marked a

turnaround in communication systems and real telecommunication was born. Telephones
slowly gave way to television, videophone, satellite and finally computer networks.
Computer networks have revolutionized modern day communication and communication
technologies.

In this tutorial, we will discuss in detail how networks have evolved since the first network
known as ARPANET. We will also discuss the hardware and software components of
networking and the concept of global communication via Internet.

Audience
This tutorial is designed for anyone who wants to understand the basic concepts of
networking and how a network functions.

Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course except an appetite for learning how networks in
general and Internet in particular operate.

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 Communication Technologies

Table of Contents
About the Tutorial .................................................................................................................................... i

Audience .................................................................................................................................................. i

Prerequisites ............................................................................................................................................ i

Copyright & Disclaimer............................................................................................................................. i

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................... ii

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ INTRODUCTION ........................................................ 1

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ HISTORY OF NETWORKING ....................................... 2

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ TERMINOLOGIES....................................................... 5

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ SWITCHING TECHNIQUES ......................................... 7

Circuit Switching ..................................................................................................................................... 7

Packet Switching ..................................................................................................................................... 8

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ TRANSMISSION MEDIA ............................................. 9

Twisted Pair Cable ................................................................................................................................... 9

Shielding twisted pair cable .................................................................................................................. 10

Coaxial Cable ......................................................................................................................................... 10

Optical Fibre .......................................................................................................................................... 12

Infrared ................................................................................................................................................. 13

Radio Wave ........................................................................................................................................... 14

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ NETWORK DEVICES................................................. 16

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ NETWORK TOPOLOGIES ......................................... 21

Bus Topology ......................................................................................................................................... 21

Ring Topology ....................................................................................................................................... 22

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Star Topology ........................................................................................................................................ 23

Tree Topology ....................................................................................................................................... 24

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ TYPES OF NETWORKS ............................................. 26

PAN ....................................................................................................................................................... 26

LAN ....................................................................................................................................................... 27

MAN...................................................................................................................................................... 28

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ NETWORK PROTOCOLS........................................... 29

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ MOBILE COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS ................ 34

GSM ...................................................................................................................................................... 35

CDMA .................................................................................................................................................... 35

WLL ....................................................................................................................................................... 35

GPRS ..................................................................................................................................................... 36

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ MOBILE COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES........... 37

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ EMAIL PROTOCOLS ................................................. 39

SMTP ..................................................................................................................................................... 39

POP3 ..................................................................................................................................................... 40

IMAP ..................................................................................................................................................... 40

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ VOIP ....................................................................... 41

H.323..................................................................................................................................................... 41

SIP ......................................................................................................................................................... 42

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES ...................................... 43

Wi-Fi...................................................................................................................................................... 43

WiMax .................................................................................................................................................. 44

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 Communication Technologies

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ NETWORK SECURITY ............................................... 45

Virus ...................................................................................................................................................... 46

Trojan Horse.......................................................................................................................................... 47

Worms .................................................................................................................................................. 47

Spams ................................................................................................................................................... 48

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ FIREWALL ............................................................... 49

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ COOKIES ................................................................. 51

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ HACKING ................................................................ 53

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ SECURITY ACTS & LAWS.......................................... 55

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ─ WEB SERVICES ........................................................ 59

WWW ................................................................................................................................................... 59

HTML..................................................................................................................................................... 59

XML ....................................................................................................................................................... 59

HTTP...................................................................................................................................................... 61

Domain Names ...................................................................................................................................... 61

URL ....................................................................................................................................................... 63

Websites ............................................................................................................................................... 63

Web Browsers ....................................................................................................................................... 64

Web Servers .......................................................................................................................................... 65

Web Hosting ......................................................................................................................................... 65

Web Scripting ........................................................................................................................................ 65

Web 2.0 ................................................................................................................................................. 66

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 Communication Technologies ─Communication
IntroductionTechnologies

Exchange of information through the use of speech, signs or symbols is called communication.
When early humans started speaking, some 5,00,000 years ago, that was the first mode of
communication. Before we dive into modern technologies that drive communication in
contemporary world, we need to know how humans developed better communication
techniques to share knowledge with each other.

History of Communication
Communicating with people over a distance is known as telecommunication. The first forms
of telecommunication were smoke signals, drums or fire torches. The major disadvantage
with these communication systems was that only a set of pre-determined messages could be
transmitted. This was overcome in the 18th and 19th century through development of
telegraphy and Morse code.

Invention of telephone and establishment of commercial telephony in 1878 marked a

turnaround in communication systems and real telecommunication was born. International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) defines telecommunication as transmission, emission and
reception of any signs, signals or messages by electromagnetic systems. Now we had the

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communication technology to connect with people physically located thousands of kilometers

away.

Telephones slowly gave way to television, videophone, satellite and finally computer
networks. Computer networks have revolutionized modern day communication and
communication technologies. That will be the subject of our in-depth study in subsequent
chapters.

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Communication Technologies ─ History of Networking

ARPANET – the First Network

ARPANET – Advanced Research Projects Agency Network – the granddad of Internet
was a network established by the US Department of Defense (DOD). The work for establishing
the network started in the early 1960s and DOD sponsored major research work, which
resulted in development on initial protocols, languages and frameworks for network
communication.

It had four nodes at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Stanford Research
Institute (SRI), University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) and University of Utah. On
October 29, 1969, the first message was exchanged between UCLA and SRI. E-mail was
created by Roy Tomlinson in 1972 at Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) after UCLA was
connected to BBN.

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Internet
ARPANET expanded to connect DOD with those universities of the US that were carrying out
defense-related research. It covered most of the major universities across the country. The
concept of networking got a boost when University College of London (UK) and Royal Radar
Network (Norway) connected to the ARPANET and a network of networks was formed.

The term Internet was coined by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine of Stanford
University to describe this network of networks. Together they also developed protocols to
facilitate information exchange over the Internet. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) still
forms the backbone of networking.

Telenet

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Telenet was the first commercial adaptation of ARPANET introduced in 1974. With this the
concept of Internet Service Provider (ISP) was also introduced. The main function of an ISP
is to provide uninterrupted Internet connection to its customers at affordable rates.

World Wide Web

With commercialization of internet, more and more networks were developed in different part
of the world. Each network used different protocols for communicating over the network. This
prevented different networks from connecting together seamlessly. In the 1980s, Tim
Berners-Lee led a group of Computer scientists at CERN, Switzerland, to create a seamless
network of varied networks, called the World Wide Web (WWW).

World Wide Web is a complex web of websites and web pages connected together through
hypertexts. Hypertext is a word or group of words linking to another web page of the same
or different website. When the hypertext is clicked, another web page opens.

The evolution from ARPANET to WWW was possible due to many new achievements by
researchers and computer scientists all over the world. Here are some of those developments:

Year Milestone

1957 Advanced Research Project Agency formed by US

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1969 ARPANET became functional

1970 ARPANET connected to BBN

1972 Roy Tomlinson develops network messaging or E-mail. Symbol @

comes to mean "at"

1973 APRANET connected to Royal Radar Network of Norway

1974 Term Internet coined

First commercial use of ARPANET, Telenet, is approved

1982 TCP/IP introduced as standard protocol on ARPANET

1983 Domain Name System introduced

1986 National Science Foundation brings connectivity to more people with its
NSFNET program

ARPANET decommissioned
1990 First web browser Nexus developed
HTML developed

2002-2004 Web 2.0 is born

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 Communication Technologies ─Communication
TerminologiesTechnologies

Before we dive into details of networking, let us discuss some common terms associated with
data communication.

Channel
Physical medium like cables over which information is exchanged is called channel.
Transmission channel may be analog or digital. As the name suggests, analog channels
transmit data using analog signals while digital channels transmit data using digital
signals.

In popular network terminology, path over which data is sent or received is called data
channel. This data channel may be a tangible medium like copper wire cables or broadcast
medium like radio waves.

Data Transfer Rate

The speed of data transferred or received over transmission channel, measured per unit time,
is called data transfer rate. The smallest unit of measurement is bits per second (bps). 1 bps
means 1 bit (0 or 1) of data is transferred in 1 second.

Here are some commonly used data transfer rates:

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 1 Bps = 1 Byte per second = 8 bits per second

 1 kbps = 1 kilobit per second = 1024 bits per second
 1Mbps = 1 Megabit per second = 1024 Kbps
 1 Gbps = 1 Gigabit per second = 1024 Mbps

Bandwidth
Data transfer rates that can be supported by a network is called its bandwidth. It is measured
in bits per second (bps). Modern day networks provide bandwidth in Kbps, Mbps and Gbps.
Some of the factors affecting a network’s bandwidth include:

 Network devices used

 Protocols used
 Number of users connected
 Network overheads like collision, errors, etc.

Throughput
Throughput is the actual speed with which data gets transferred over the network. Besides
transmitting the actual data, network bandwidth is used for transmitting error messages,
acknowledgement frames, etc.

Throughput is a better measurement of network speed, efficiency and capacity utilization

rather than bandwidth.

Protocol
Protocol is a set of rules and regulations used by devices to communicate over the network.
Just like humans, computers also need rules to ensure successful communication. If two
people start speaking at the same time or in different languages when no interpreter is
present, no meaningful exchange of information can occur.

Similarly, devices connected on the network need to follow rules defining situations like when
and how to transmit data, when to receive data, how to give error-free message, etc.

Some common protocols used over the Internet are:

 Transmission Control Protocol

 Internet Protocol
 Point to Point Protocol
 File Transfer Protocol
 Hypertext Transfer Protocol

 Internet Message Access Protocol

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Communication Technologies ─ Switching Techniques

In large networks, there may be more than one paths for transmitting data from sender to
receiver. Selecting a path that data must take out of the available options is called
switching. There are two popular switching techniques – circuit switching and packet
switching.

Circuit Switching
When a dedicated path is established for data transmission between sender and receiver, it
is called circuit switching. When any network node wants to send data, be it audio, video, text
or any other type of information, a call request signal is sent to the receiver and
acknowledged back to ensure availability of dedicated path. This dedicated path is then used
to send data. ARPANET used circuit switching for communication over the network.

Advantages of Circuit Switching

Circuit switching provides these advantages over other switching techniques:

 Once path is set up, the only delay is in data transmission speed
 No problem of congestion or garbled message

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 Communication Technologies

Disadvantages of Circuit Switching

Circuit switching has its disadvantages too:

 Long set up time is required

 A request token must travel to the receiver and then acknowledged before any
transmission can happen

 Line may be held up for a long time

Packet Switching
As we discussed, the major problem with circuit switching is that it needs a dedicated line for
transmission. In packet switching, data is broken down into small packets with each packet
having source and destination addresses, travelling from one router to the next router.

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 Communication Technologies
Communication Technologies ─ Transmission Media

For any networking to be effective, raw stream of data is to be transported from one device
to other over some medium. Various transmission media can be used for transfer of data.
These transmission media may be of two types:

 Guided: In guided media, transmitted data travels through cabling system that has a
fixed path. For example, copper wires, fibre optic wires, etc.

 Unguided: In unguided media, transmitted data travels through free space in form of
electromagnetic signal. For example, radio waves, lasers, etc.

Each transmission media has its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of bandwidth,
speed, delay, cost per bit, ease of installation and maintenance, etc. Let’s discuss some of
the most commonly used media in detail.

Twisted Pair Cable

Copper wires are the most common wires used for transmitting signals because of good
performance at low costs. They are most commonly used in telephone lines. However, if two
or more wires are lying together, they can interfere with each other’s signals. To reduce this
electromagnetic interference, pair of copper wires are twisted together in helical shape like a
DNA molecule. Such twisted copper wires are called twisted pair. To reduce interference
between nearby twisted pairs, the twist rates are different for each pair.

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 Communication Technologies

Up to 25 twisted pair are put together in a protective covering to form twisted pair cables that
are the backbone of telephone systems and Ethernet networks.

Advantages of twisted pair cable

Twisted pair cable are the oldest and most popular cables all over the world. This is due to
the many advantages that they offer:

 Trained personnel easily available due to shallow learning curve

 Can be used for both analog and digital transmissions
 Least expensive for short distances
 Entire network does not go down if a part of network is damaged

Disadvantages of twisted pair cable

With its many advantages, twisted pair cables offer some disadvantages too:

 Signal cannot travel long distances without repeaters

 High error rate for distances greater than 100m
 Very thin and hence breaks easily
 Not suitable for broadband connections

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 Communication Technologies

Shielding twisted pair cable

To counter the tendency of twisted pair cables to pick up noise signals, wires are shielded in
the following three ways:

 Each twisted pair is shielded.

 Set of multiple twisted pairs in the cable is shielded.
 Each twisted pair and then all the pairs are shielded.

Such twisted pairs are called shielded twisted pair (STP) cables. The wires that are not
shielded but simply bundled together in a protective sheath are called unshielded twisted
pair (UTP) cables. These cables can have maximum length of 100 metres.

Shielding makes the cable bulky, so UTP are more popular than STP. UTP cables are used as
the last mile network connection in homes and offices.

Coaxial Cable
Coaxial cables are copper cables with better shielding than twisted pair cables, so that
transmitted signals may travel longer distances at higher speeds. A coaxial cable consists of
these layers, starting from the innermost:

 Stiff copper wire as core

 Insulating material surrounding the core
 Closely woven braided mesh of conducting material surrounding the insulator
 Protective plastic sheath encasing the wire

Coaxial cables are widely used for cable TV connections and LANs.

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 Communication Technologies

Advantages of Coaxial Cables

These are the advantages of coaxial cables:

 Excellent noise immunity

 Signals can travel longer distances at higher speeds, e.g. 1 to 2 Gbps for 1 Km cable

 Can be used for both analog and digital signals

 Inexpensive as compared to fibre optic cables
 Easy to install and maintain

Disadvantages of Coaxial Cables

These are some of the disadvantages of coaxial cables:

 Expensive as compared to twisted pair cables

 Not compatible with twisted pair cables

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Optical Fibre
Thin glass or plastic threads used to transmit data using light waves are called optical fibre.
Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) or Laser Diodes (LDs) emit light waves at the source, which is
read by a detector at the other end. Optical fibre cable has a bundle of such threads or
fibres bundled together in a protective covering. Each fibre is made up of these three layers,
starting with the innermost layer:

 Core made of high quality silica glass or plastic

 Cladding made of high quality silica glass or plastic, with a lower refractive index
than the core

 Protective outer covering called buffer

Note that both core and cladding are made of similar material. However, as refractive index
of the cladding is lower, any stray light wave trying to escape the core is reflected back due
to total internal reflection.

Optical fibre is rapidly replacing copper wires in telephone lines, internet communication and
even cable TV connections because transmitted data can travel very long distances without
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weakening. Single node fibre optic cable can have maximum segment length of 2 kms and
bandwidth of up to 100 Mbps. Multi-node fibre optic cable can have maximum segment
length of 100 kms and bandwidth up to 2 Gbps.

Advantages of Optical Fibre

Optical fibre is fast replacing copper wires because of these advantages that it offers:

 High bandwidth
 Immune to electromagnetic interference
 Suitable for industrial and noisy areas
 Signals carrying data can travel long distances without weakening

Disadvantages of Optical Fibre

Despite long segment lengths and high bandwidth, using optical fibre may not be a viable
option for every one due to these disadvantages:

 Optical fibre cables are expensive

 Sophisticated technology required for manufacturing, installing and maintaining optical
fibre cables

 Light waves are unidirectional, so two frequencies are required for full duplex
transmission

Infrared
Low frequency infrared waves are used for very short distance communication like TV remote,
wireless speakers, automatic doors, hand held devices etc. Infrared signals can propagate
within a room but cannot penetrate walls. However, due to such short range, it is considered
to be one of the most secure transmission modes.

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 Communication Technologies

Radio Wave
Transmission of data using radio frequencies is called radio-wave transmission. We all are
familiar with radio channels that broadcast entertainment programs. Radio stations transmit
radio waves using transmitters, which are received by the receiver installed in our devices.

Both transmitters and receivers use antennas to radiate or capture radio signals. These radio
frequencies can also be used for direct voice communication within the allocated range.
This range is usually 10 miles.

Advantages of Radio Wave

These are some of the advantages of radio wave transmissions:

 Inexpensive mode of information exchange

 No land needs to be acquired for laying cables
 Installation and maintenance of devices is cheap

Disadvantages of Radio Wave

These are some of the disadvantages of radio wave transmissions:

 Insecure communication medium

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 Prone to weather changes like rain, thunderstorms, etc.

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Communication Technologies ─ Network Devices

Hardware devices that are used to connect computers, printers, fax machines and other
electronic devices to a network are called network devices. These devices transfer data in
a fast, secure and correct way over same or different networks. Network devices may be
inter-network or intra-network. Some devices are installed on the device, like NIC card or
RJ45 connector, whereas some are part of the network, like router, switch, etc. Let us explore
some of these devices in greater detail.

Modem
Modem is a device that enables a computer to send or receive data over telephone or cable
lines. The data stored on the computer is digital whereas a telephone line or cable wire can
transmit only analog data.

The main function of the modem is to convert digital signal into analog and vice versa. Modem
is a combination of two devices – modulator and demodulator. The modulator converts
digital data into analog data when the data is being sent by the computer. The demodulator
converts analog data signals into digital data when it is being received by the computer.

Types of Modem
Modem can be categorized in several ways like direction in which it can transmit data, type
of connection to the transmission line, transmission mode, etc.

Depending on direction of data transmission, modem can be of these types:

1. Simplex: A simplex modem can transfer data in only one direction, from digital device
to network (modulator) or network to digital device (demodulator).

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2. Half duplex: A half-duplex modem has the capacity to transfer data in both the
directions but only one at a time.

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