B227 Data Communications

Assignment 2 (Internal Students only)

DUE DATE: 5pm Friday 12^th May 2000.

This assignment is worth 10% of your final mark in this unit. As stated in the unit outline, YOU MUST SUBMIT this assignment to pass the unit.

Questions:

(40 marks) Using the tools available to you in LINUX, do the following:
1. Report on the traffic characteristics of our local network - in the laboratory, around Murdoch University, and around Perth.
  Your report must contain:
  - A description of of how you approach your tests to collect the data for the report, and a justification of your test steps.
  - Summaries of average response times during different times of the day, and different days of the week (you are only required to report on the times when the labs are open Mon-Fri 9am-7pm).
  - Some analysis and conclusion drawn from the response times.
2. Consider the following scenario: You are a network administrator. While working on a workstation, you are suddenly cut off from the rest of the network. The network is an 802.3 network, with all machines running LINUX. You need to isolate the part of the network (machine or link) that is at fault.
  Using the tools you learnt in the tutorials, describe a good approach to the task of isolating the section of the network where the fault lies.
3. Would your approach in (b) be different if your network is an 802.4 or a 802.5? If so, describe your new approaches. If not, describe why.
(52 marks - 4 marks each) From the textbook Computer Networks (3^rd Ed) by Andrew Tanenbaum, answer the following questions at the end of chapters:
- Chapter 3, Questions 3, 7, 30.
- Chapter 4, Questions 2, 10, 22, 23, 25, 35, 36, 39.
- Chapter 5, Questions 7, 14.

A final 8 marks will be for presentation, to make a total of 100 marks. Presentation will consist of conciseness and clarity in writing, and neatness of submitted document.