NETWORK MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENT 1

Network Management Assignment 1

Network Management Assignment 1

Introduction

A computer network is a connection of two or more computers in order to share resources and data. These shared resources can include devices like printers and other resources like electronic mail, internet access, and file sharing. A computer network can also be seen as a collection of Personal computers and other related devices which are connected together, either with cables or wirelessly, so that they can share information and communicate with one another. Computer networks vary in size. Some networks are needed for areas within a single office, while others are vast or even span the globe.

Network management has grown as a career that requires specialized training, and comes with management of important responsibilities, thus creating future opportunities for employment. The resulting expected increase in opportunities should be a determining and persuasive factor for graduates to consider going into network management (Easton 2002).

Computer networking is a discipline of engineering that involves communication between various computer devices and systems. In computer networking, protocols, routers, routing, and networking across the public internet have specifications that are defined in RFC documents. Computer networking can be seen as a sub-category of computer science, telecommunications, IT and/or computer engineering. Computer networks also depend largely upon the practical and theoretical applications of these engineering and scientific disciplines.

Discussion

In the vastly technological environment of today, most organisations have some kind of network that is used every day. It is essential that the day-to-day operations in such a company or organisation are carried out on a network that runs smoothly. Most companies employ a network administrator or manager to oversee this very important aspect of the company's business. This is a significant position, as it comes with great responsibilities because an organisation will experience significant operational losses if problems arise within its network.

Computer networking also involves the setting up of any set of computers or computer devices and enabling them to exchange information and data. Some examples of computer networks include: Local area networks (LANs) that are made up of small networks which are constrained to a relatively small geographic area (Achrol 1997).

Wide area networks (WANs) which are usually bigger than local area networks, and cover a large geographic area.

Wireless LANs and WANs (WLAN & WWAN). These represent the wireless equivalent of the Local Area Network and Wide Area Networks involve interconnection to allow communication with a variety of different kinds of media, including twisted-pair copper wire cable, coaxial cable, optical fiber, and various wireless technologies. The devices can be separated by a few meters (e.g. via Bluetooth) or nearly unlimited distances (e.g. via the interconnections of the Internet (Dobson 2002).

TASK 1TCP connection congestion controlEvery application, whether it is a small or large application, should perform adaptive congestion control because applications that perform congestion control use a network more efficiently and are generally of better performance.

Congestion control algorithms prevent the network from entering Congestive Collapse (Adler 2001). Congestive Collapse is a situation where, although the network links are ...