91377 Student Report
Demonstrate understanding of local area network technologies involves:
Describing networking concepts
Explaining why the components have been used in a local area network (LAN) to achieve the desired characteristics
Explaining how the connection technologies allow the components to function in a LAN
Describing the access control method used in the Ethernet architecture.

LAN Uses 2
Characteristics 2
Purpose 2
Peer to Peer LANs 3
Characteristics 3
Purpose 3
Client/Server LANs 3
Characteristics 3
Purpose 3
Bandwidth 4
QoS 4
Data Transmission Modes 4
Network Address Translation (NAT) 5
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) 6
Open System Interconnection (OSI) Model 7
IP Addressing 8
Components 9

To …show more content…
All data is centrally stored on the server where it can be accessed by the clients. The server manages all requests from clients while providing them with an internet connection. Client/Server networks have several advantages over p2p which make them more practical for large corporate businesses. The server administrator can easily control the level user access of shared resources and because data is centralised it is easy to create backups of important documents. Because of this Client/Server LANs are considerably more secure as the consequences of a compromised machine are far less than that of one in a p2p network. Additionally Client/Server LANs are more efficient and cost effective on a larger scale. The only significant disadvantage of a Client/Server LAN is the higher cost of installation and maintenance.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is essentially the speed of an internet connection. Bandwidth is a measure of how much data is transferred per unit time, generally measured in megabits per second (mb/s) or megabytes per second (Mb/s). Bandwidth distribution is a common issue in LANs as they typically share one connection to the internet. To mitigate this (QoS) Quality of Service packet scheduling is typically used. QoS prioritises distribution of bandwidth to achieve optimal performance across a network.

QoS

Data Transmission …show more content…
For example a speaker which can only receive data but cannot return a message back to the source.

Half Duplex - In half duplex mode data can travel in both directions. Half duplex connection are like single lane bridges where data can be sent both ways but messages must travel one at a time. Walkie-Talkies utilise half duplex transmission as data goes both ways, but only one person can speak at a time.

Full Duplex - Full duplex transmission allows for bidirectional flow of data, with devices able to send and receive data at the same time. Telephones use full duplex connections so that people can both talk and listen simultaneously.

Network Address Translation (NAT)

Network Address Translation is a method used to remap one ip address to another. This is achieved by modifying information in the headers of datagrams (See format of datagram header below). NAT can be useful as is gives the ability to reroute traffic on networks without the need to redress all other hosts on the network. Due to the shortage of
IPv4 addresses NAT has more recently been used to conserve address space. This is done by sharing one NAT gateway over an entire network meaning there is only one internet routable IP address