Back in the eighties, John Gage of Sun Microsystems coined the phrase, “The network is the computer.” Today, the services made possible by the Internet and our use of them as individuals and organizations affirm John’s statement perhaps in ways they were not even imaginable three decades ago. Technology trends… Read more »
(this is the third post of the series “behind the wall”. Here are the first and second) The Internet is made of light. That is because the Internet’s backbone is mostly made of optical fibre links that guide light pulses representing data streams. Optical fiber technology permits the transmission of… Read more »
The Internet is a network of networks. Every machine that is connected to the Internet is part of a network. At home, you are likely connected to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). At work, your computer is part of the organization’s local area network (LAN), a network that is… Read more »
It started when my cousin asked, “So what exactly DO you do for a living?” “Do you have a computer tethered by a data cable to the wall?” I responded. “Yes,” “Well my job is to build what goes on behind the wall.” This conversation happened just a few years… Read more »
Firewalls are the primary defense mechanisms against network security threats. A firewall is a system that can be positioned between any two networks to control the passage of data traffic in and out of these networks. Typically, the two networks are the internal, trusted, network and the Internet [1]. Firewalls… Read more »
The mainstream consumer market started seeing Wi-Fi products based on IEEE 802.11ac standard in 2013. The standard is the fifth generation of Wi-Fi networking technology that promises more bandwidth to users at home and the office. The new Wi-Fi brings new improvements to wireless networks including offering 1.3Gbps of bandwidth… Read more »
Earlier this year, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it would begin working on enabling vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology for light vehicles [1]. This step is part of the agency’s effort to improve transportation safety and it is a signal to the transportation-related industries to begin the deployment… Read more »
Many applications, especially those that require visualizing complex information, rely on manipulating and presenting data as graphs composed of nodes and links. A graph, in the mathematical context, is a set of objects represented as vertices, or nodes, and a set of links connecting some pairs of objects. The graph… Read more »
This is another example of using Processing to create animations. The GraphAnimation program demonstrates packet forwarding by flooding. A packet sent by node A is replicated by every node (router) it reaches and sent in all connected links until it reaches the destination node N. Knowing the shortest route, node… Read more »
Any organization that relies on data networks for its core operations needs to ensure the continued availability of its network infrastructure, which includes LAN devices (switches, routers, firewalls, etc.), WAN links, Internet and cloud connections, and the support facilities (power, air conditioning, etc.). The network operator may achieve the desired… Read more »