TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK ALTERNATIVES

Telecommunication is highly technical, rapidly changing field of information systems technology. Most business professionals do not need a detailed knowledge of its technical characteristics.

Many companies are managing their use of network bandwidth to cut costs and provide more telecommunications capacity for their high priority business applications, and avoid buying more bandwidth.

KIM ROSS is CIO of Nielsen Media Research

NETWORK BANDWIDTH MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES

MONITORING AND

ENFORCING

STREAMLINING NETWORKS

CENTRALIZING

OPERATIONS

TESTING AND TUNING

APPLICATIONS

KEY TELECOMMUNICTION NETWORK COMPONENTS AND

ALTERNATIVESNetwork Alternatives Examples of Alternatives

Networks Internet, intranet, extranet, wide area, local area, client/server, network computing, peer-to-peer

Media Twisted-pair wire, coaxial cable, fiber optics, microwave radio, communications satellites, cellular and PCS systems, wireless mobile, and LAN systems

Processors Modem, multiplexers, switches, routers, hubs, gateways, front-end processors, private branch exchanges

Software Network operating system, telecommunications, monitors, Web browsers, middle ware

Channels Analog/digital, switched/non switched, circuit/message/packet/cell switching, bandwidth alternatives

Topology/architecture Star, ring, and bus topology, OSI and TCP/IP architectures and protocols

TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK MODELS

FIVE (5) BASIC CATEGORIES

TERMINALS

TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROCESSORS

TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHANNELS

COMPUTERS

TELECOMMUNICATIONS CONTROL AND

SOFTWARE

TYPS OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS

VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK

LOCAL AREA NETWORKS

WIDE AREA NETWORKS

A LOCAL AREA NETWORK (LAN)

CLIENT/SERVER

VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK

NETWORK COMPUTING

PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS ARCHITECTURE WITH A DIRECTORY OF ALL PEERS ON A CENTRAL SERVER

A PURE PEER-TO-PEER NETWORK ARCHITECTURE WITH NO CENTRAL DIRECTORY SERVER

TELECOMMUNICATIONS MEDIA

Twisted-pair wire

Coaxial cable

Fiber optics

WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES

Communications Satellite

Ericsson Smartphone

Bob Evans Farms Inc.

Cellular and PCS systems

Wireless LAN

The Wireless Web