1.

1 Identify and describe at least three ways that networks contribute to business success Good networks make it easier to manage geographically dispersed operating locations. Help orgs deliver information to workers in a timely manner, improve communication and information management within and between business organizations. Good networks also bring business partners closer together in ways that improve efficiency, customer service, agility, and innovation. 1.2 Describe the traffic, service, and hardware trends in business networks Traffic growth- no longer limited to voice and data, increasing business emphasis on web service, remote access, online transactions, and social networking Services- desired services is expanding, increasing data traffic bc of smart phones and tablets, demand for services to support high res camera phones, video streams, & high-end audio Hardware- more powerful computers and clusters of computers capable of supporting more demand applications, more "intelligent" networks, internet and web have led to intranet and extranets 1.3 Convergence- Refers to the merger of previously distinct telephony and information technologies and markets. Convergence is the efficient coexistence of telephone, video and data communication within a single network. Using a single integrated network to provide solutions that were previously performed by two or more separate networks. Convergence brings benefits, such as, simplified network management, increased efficiency, and greater flexibility at an application level. Three layer model: Applications Seen by the end users of a business Integrates communications applications Enterprise services Seen by the network manager Ensures that users can take full advantage of the applications that they use (privacy mechanisms, authentication services, support remote print services and network storage facilities, setting up collaborative environments) Infrastructure Consists of the communication links, LANs, WANs, and Internet connections available to the enterprise Also includes private and/or public cloud connections to data centers 1.4 Characteristics of unified communications systems. it's a communications architecture which automates and unifies all forms of human and device communications in context, and with a common experience. Its purpose is to optimize business processes and enhance human communications by reducing latency, managing flows, and eliminating device and media dependencies. Personal productivity gains: Presence information helps employees find each other and choose the most effective way to communicate in real time. Less time is wasted calling multiple numbers to locate co-workers or checking multiple work-related voice mailboxes. Calls from VIP contacts can be routed simultaneously to all of a UC users phone devices (office phone, softphone, smartphone, home phone) to ensure faster responsiveness to customers, partners, and co-workers. With mobile presence information capabilities, employees who are geographically closest can be dispatched to address a problem. Workgroup performance gains: UC systems support real-time collaboration among team members which facilitates workgroup performance improvements. Examples include the use of presence information to speed identification of an available individual with the right skills a work team needs to address a problem. Enhanced conferencing capabilities with desktop VTC and interactive white boards

and automated business rules to route or escalate communications also help to increase workgroup performance. Enterprise-level process improvements: IP convergence enables UC to be integrated with enterprisewide and departmental-level applications, business processes, and workflows. UC-enabled enhanced communications with customers, suppliers, and business partners are redefining best practices for CRM, SCM, and other enterprise-wide applications and are transforming relationships among members of business networks. Communication-enabled business processes (CEBP) are fueling competition in several industries including financial services, health care, and retail. 4 types of communication traffic carried by business networks. Voice communications- telephone related communication, voice mail, and VoIP Data communications- Refers to virtually any form of information transfer other than voice Image communications- best example is Fax. images attached in e-mail messages Video communications- videoconferencing CHAPTER 2 Telephone quality: 8000 smp/s, each sample using 8 bits 8 bits * 8000 smp/s = 64 kbps to transmit CD audio quality: 44,100 smp/s, each sample using 16 bits 16 bits * 44,100 smp/s = 1.41mbps to transmit clearly Quantization- The process after sampling that puts signal amplitudes in digital form. Interlacing- to provide flicker free image without increasing the bandwidth requirement. Difference in Digital and Analog communications Digital uses a sequence of discrete, discontinuous values or symbols to represent information. Discrete information has a finite "alphabet", such as letters, numbers, icons, and binary data. In digital systems, the information rate and capacity of a digital channel are measured in bits per second. Analog uses a continuous range of values to represent information. Analog information sources include sounds, music, and video. For analog communication systems, information rate and channel capacity are measured in hertz of bandwidth. response time- the time it takes for a system to react to a given input. User response time: The time span between the moment a user receives a complete reply to one command and enters the next command. People often refer to this as think time. System response time: The time span between the moment the user enters a command and the moment a complete response is displayed on the computing device. Throughput- the productivity of a machine, process, system, or procedure over a given time period. In business networks, throughput is the average rate of message delivery over a communication channel or the network as a whole. It can be thought of as total bandwidth capacity of a communications channel or network. CHAPTER 3 Data Centers- a facility that houses computer systems and their associated components in storage systems and networking equipment. Centralized Computers - One or more computers are located in a central facility

Centralized Processing - All applications are run on computers in the central data processing facility Centralized Data - Most data are stored in files and databases at the central facility Centralized Control - The central facility is managed by a data processing or information security manager Centralized Support Staff - Must include a technical support staff to operate and maintain the data center hardware and applications distributed data processing (DDP) strategy. When a distributed data processing strategy is followed, computers (usually smaller computers) are dispersed throughout an organization. The objective of such dispersion is to process information in a way that is most effective based on operational, economic, and/or geographic considerations, or all three. DDP Benefits: responsiveness, availability, resource sharing, easier to gradually replace applications to enable incremental growth, increased user involvement and control, distance and location independence, privacy and security, flexibility. DDP Drawbacks: more challenging failure diagnosis, more dependent on communications technology, incompatibility among equipment and data, data integrity, security. Tier 1 data centers are the most basic and have few redundant components. In Tier 4 data centers, most major components have a redundant backup, even the HVAC equipment has dual power sources to eliminate the possibility of power failure. Power and communications failures are the major threat to data center operations, especially if the business has a single centralized facility. To ensure business continuity, many organizations with central data centers have contracts with thirdparty companies to ensure that redundant data and processing equipment is available off-site should the data center be hit by a catastrophic event. The third-party firms data center houses backup servers that the businesses can use should their data center fail as well as backup copies of the businesses databases. In-memory computing systems - Processors include terabyte-plus RAM capable of storing large data sets. Has the potential to revolutionize business intelligence (BI) by making it possible to bring the equivalent data warehouse into memory to enable real-time data mining and business analytics intranet provides users of client devices with applications associated with the Internet but isolated within the organization. Includes wholly owned content that is not accessible to external users over the public Internet. Such content can also be accessed by authorized internal users even though the corporation has Internet connections and runs a Web server on the Internet Extranet- Enables authorized outside clients with fairly extensive access to corporate resources. This outside access can be provided via the companys connections to the Internet or through other data communications networks. distributed database is a collection of several different databases, distributed among multiple computers, that looks like a single database to the user. The computers may be located within a centralized data center or in different, geographically disbursed data centers. The DBMS controls access to the distributed database and enables the user to treat the distributed database as if it was a single database. The DBMS must include a directory that identifies the physical location of each data element

in the database whether these are on different machines within the same data center or on machines in distributed data centers. In general terms, we can distinguish three ways of organizing data for use by an organization: centralized, replicated, and partitioned.

CHAPTER 4