Internet Protocols are the most popular protocols that are used to communicate over the interconnected networks.  The Internet protocols consist of the suite of protocols in which there are two major protocols i.e. TCP and IP and it is also known as TCP/IP protocols.  TCP/IP was first developed in 1970 by a community of the researchers.  TCP/IP provides a lot of services and the most common includes email, files transfer, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, DNS and remote login.

TCP stands for the transmission control protocol and it provides the reliable data transmission in the IP based networks such as LAN, WAN and internet.  It provides the connection-oriented and reliable end to end data packets delivery within an internetwork.  The reliability mechanism of the TCP enables the communication devices to deal with the lost, duplicated and misread data packets. TCP ensures the delivery of the data packets in the same sequence as they are received.

The other part of the TCP/IP is the IP, which stands for Internet Protocol. IP is responsible for the transmission of the data from one computer to another and each computer in the IP-based networks must has a unique identifier which is known as an IP address. IP is a connectionless protocol and it means that there is not continuous connection between the two communicating protocols.

IP works on the network layer of the OSI layers model.  The most widely used version of the IP is the IPv4 but now IPv6 now also began to be supported. IPv6 supports relatively longer IP addresses which show the possibility of many more web users.  The other protocols of the TCP/IP suite are described below.

FTP

FTP stands for the files transfer protocol and it is used to send and receive the files over the IP based networks such as Internet.

SMTP

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and it is used to send the email messages to the recipient’s email address through the SMTP server.

DHCP

DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and it is used to assign the IP addresses and TCP/IP configurations to the network computers dynamically.

HTTP

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and it is used to send the requests for a web page to the web server where the web page is hosted.

LDAP

LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and it used to communicate with the Active Directory in the TCP/IP network.

POP3

POP3 stand for Post Office Protocol and it is used to receive the emails from the email servers.

Telnet

Telnet is a TCP/IP utility that is used to configure, troubleshoot and manage the remote computers and servers.

PPTP

PPTP stands for Point to Point Tunneling Protocol and it used for the secure communication in the Virtual Private Network.

RIP

RIP stands Routing Information Protocol.  It is a single vector routing protocol.  In the vector routing protocols the routers exchanges network information with each others.

SNMP

SNMP stands for Simple Network Management Protocol and it is used for the network management.

TFTP

TFTP stands for Trivial Files Transfer Protocol and it is a very simple files transfer protocol.  It is very close to the FTP but it lacks the authentication mechanism.

OSPF

OSPF stands for Open Shortest Path First Protocol and it used to find the shortest possible path from one router to another in a network.

There are two most popular technological trends internet and mobile communications. IP connectivity and mobile communication comes together to provide the best desktop computing and cellular communication. IP has changed the networking world and reshaping the enterprise architecture such as VOIP, VPN and IP telephony etc.

Mobile IP is a standard that allows the users to stay connected, use the same IP address and maintaining the applications in the IP networks.

Mobile IP is a technology that supports mobile and wireless networking applications such as 3G, 2.5G, GPRS, CDMA, GSM, TDMA, WLAN, IPV4, Cisco Routers and mobile commerce.

Cisco Systems offer Mobile IP Telephony (MIPT) that is designed to enable the individuals to configure Cisco Router to support mobile IP, configure Cisco Router to support AAA server, using exact IOS commands and implementing security.

In this course, the individuals will also be able to learn mobile IP technologies, firewall, VPN, Qos, NAT, IPv6 and managing the mobile infrastructure, scalability, troubleshooting and management.

MIPT is designed for the network professionals who are responsible for installing, configuring and troubleshooting the Cisco Routers. Cisco’s MIPT course also covers mobile IP security, design IP protocol and design, configuring mobile IP and troubleshooting it.

Mobile data communication faces the challenge of moving the data across different networks and the solution of this problem is the standardized protocol known as mobile IP.

Mobile IP telephony and applications provides the complete resource for the secure mobile communications.

IPhone by Apple is a GSM supported internet enabled mobile phone that has the multimedia functionalities.  IPhone also introduces the new multi touch interface in the mobile phones.  IPhone combines all the heavy weight technology and revolutionized the mobile phones history.  The current price of the iPhone is the $399 for a 8GB model.  Portable media player and digital camera are also included in it.

Features

IPhone provides a variety of features and some of the common features are below.

Multimedia

IPhone provides the excellent multimedia features. It can sort its multimedia library by Artist, songs, composers, genres, albums, podcasts, audio books and play lists.  IPhone users can directly download the songs from the ITune.

Internet Connectivity

IPhone has built-in Wi-Fi features, which enables the it’s users to connect to the internet through a wireless career.  The web pages are fully displayed with the iPhone. Though it does not support Java or Flash.

Text Messages

For sending the text messages there is a virtual keyboard on the screen, which has dynamic dictionary, automatic spell checking and predictive word capabilities.  The photo albums, web pages and photos zooming are other best features.

Email

IPhone has the advanced email and voice mail features and it supports POP and Yahoo, Gmail, AOL Mail and .MAC mails.  The supported email attachments are JPEGs, PDFs, Word and Excel Documents.

Wireless Connectivity

iPhone has built-in support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology.

MAPs

Google Maps are supported by the iPhone even without the GPS data.

The other common features and specifications of the iPhone includes it has 2.0 mega pixels digital camera, battery life is about 5 hours for the video, browsing etc and 16 hours for the playback, built-in support for IMAP and POP mail, supported operating system is OS X, weight 135 gms, screen size 8.9 cm, 802.11 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support and storage is about 8 GB flash memory.

Weather repots, stocks, world clock, maps, photos, iPod, safari, YouTube, Multitasking and iTune synchronization are other best features of the iPhone.

Today mobile communication devices have become technologically advance and provide multiple features such as voice conversation, video chats, SMS, internet usage and tracking system.  Cell phones constantly broadcast radio signals and the mobile phone companies have been able to trace the near about location of the lost mobile. Mobile phone tracking system is a new technology and it can work with any standardized handset that supports GSM networks.

All mobile phones are constantly in touch with the nearest mobile phone towers and boosters to maintain a good reception of the signals.  The integration of the GPS chips into the cell phones has made this possible to track a cell phone more accurately. GSM mobile phone tracking system is cheaper than the GPS satellite tracking system.

GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite tracking system has been used for the number of the years by the cars and road transport industry.  GSM mobile phone tracking system don’t show exactly where your mobile is but it shows you the radius of the place where it is likely to be placed.  The accuracy depends on the number of factors such as landscape, network coverage and the weather conditions.

The best accuracy provided by the GPS satellite system is up to 50 to 100 meters, which is almost nearest your lost vehicle but in case of mobile phones the accuracy is not exact as GPS systems.

Setting up tracking system in your mobile is very easy and today a large number of the mobile carriers throughout the world provide this feature to their subscribers.  There are different registration methods offered by the mobile phone companies.  Some are subscription based and others are pre-pay credits based.  Cell phone GPS tracking system is very useful for the business persons and the people who want to track their fleets.  Using GPS enabled cell phone can be used to navigation device, you can calculate the speed and the estimated arrival time.

Cell phone GPS devices are also very useful in locating the whereabouts of your children.  Recently a shoe company shoe company designed a special pair of shoes, which has GPS chips.  Children with GPS enabled shoes can easily be located.

There is a best technology called Timing Advanced Chip, which is best fitted with the GPS chip and it provides and accuracy about 300%. With the advancements in the tracking system perhaps very soon the lost mobile phones will be a thing of past.

Mobile Phone/GPS Tracking Requirements

• You need to have a GPS tracking device it could be your mobile phone or dedicated GPS tracking devices that is setup in your vehicle.
• You must have Java & internet supported mobile phones for tracking the GPS devices.
• For the GPS devices you must have subscription plans of 1 MB data transmission per month, SIM card (For GSM network).  GPS device should support the GPRS and IP protocols.

 Practical Usage & Features

With the help of GPS devices children can be located.

• GPS provides emergency road side assistance from your vehicle.
• Find lost pets.
• Find correction directions to reach the time sensitive destinations.
• You can easily track your lost car, cell phone and freight etc.
• No infrastructure is required at the user end for using the Global Positioning System.
• Automatic discovery of the vehicles on the easy to understand road maps.
• Travel GPS are used to track the travel activities of the vehicles.
• Make global friends.
• Keep a collection of your favorite hot spots, destinations and sceneries that are not listed in the travel guides.

The basic purpose of the router is to connect two LANS, two WANS and LAN to WAN. Broadband routers are used for setting up the home or office network to share data, voice and video simultaneously and they support DSL, Cable Net and high speed internet connection.  There are different types of the broadband routers for the different type of small and big networks.  The most common features that are supported by them are the smart data transfer through NAT (Network Address Translation), Firewall capabilities, VPN support, DHCP server, printer sharing, Access control, Virtual Server, Web-based configuration utilities, DMZ host and Access control.

Following is the description of the different parts of the broadband router.  The internal and external antennas give better performance.  Before buying any router, assess your power requirements, make a list of the tasks that you want to be accomplished and make sure that the router is fully compatible with the wireless network. 

Main Features:

• To share the broadband internet connection such as DSL, Cable net with the all the computers in a network, laptops and the gaming consoles.
• Provides security to the home and network computers through the built-in firewall capabilities.
• Printing port at the rear panel is used to share the printer with all the computers in the network.

• Easy transfer of the data, audio and video files across the network.
• NAT support, which means all the computers in your network will share the same IP address to access the internet.  There are two types of the NAT.  1. Standard NAT and 2. MultiNAT.  In the standard NAT all inbound and outbound traffic transfers on the same IP address.  In the multi NAT, all the outbound traffic passes on the single IP address and multiple IP address support for the network traffic is also supported.
• The supported internet connections are DSL, Cable NET, dial-up analog modem, ISDN lines and two-way satellite connections. Two way satellite internet connection work fine with the Ethernet supported satellite modem.
• Few routers support more than one broadband connection at the same time such as Nextland Pro800Turbo.
• To protect your data and privacy most of the routers encode the all the wireless transmission using 128 WEP encryption techniques.
• VPN, IPSEC and PPTP supports.

Device Specifications:

Uplink Port:  Uplink port is used to attach the additional hubs, switches and routers to expand the network.

LAN Port:  When the LAN ports are being used then the LAN LED is lighted.

WAN LED:  When data is being transferred across the WAN then the green LED flashes.

Power LED:  The flashing power LED indicates that the system is working properly.

Status LED:  Status LED flashes when the broadband router is connected and functional.

The common vendors of the broadband routers are Cisco, D-Link, LinkSys, NetGear, Voyager, Belkin, Edimax, 2Wire and Belkin etc. and the prices ranges from $ 50 to $ 200.

Here you will learn WAN Optimization techniques and you will study that how optimizing the WAN can improve the performance of your network applications.  Remote and centralized storage is a big challenge for the organizations.  Additionally extra security features are required for secure communication from users to the applications. WAN optimization products accelerate the boost the performance of broad range of shared network applications that are shared by a larger number of enterprise users.  Most of the enterprise networks use WAN optimization appliances to cut the cost and network congestions.

Typically these devices reduce the traffic congestion by 10 to 20 %. On the other hand wide area data services reduce the traffic congestion by 60 % to 90 %.

How to Optimize WAN

Networks play an important role in the businesses and if the network is slow so is the business. For improving the performance there are different techniques and products are on the rise such as route control products, content delivery networks, load balancing technology, multicasting and caching.

The other techniques and methods that are involved in improving the performance of the wide area network are CIFS proxy, HTTPS proxy, media multicasting, bandwidth management, web casting and WAFS.  Deployment of the wide area network optimization appliances at the data center and the branch sites boosts the network and distributed application performance with the minimum efforts.

Improving applications performance over the networks has become the ultimate goal of the organizations.  Varying network types and applications require different solutions.  WAN accelerators and WAFS optimize the data that travel over the longer distance.  Traffic over the wire is optimized through streaming, compression, prioritization, local and centralized caching and other methods.

Optimization Techniques

The optimization software and hardware use the following techniques to boost the performance of a network.

• Staging data on the local cache
• Compressing and prioritizing data
• Streamlining chatting protocols.

Vendors

The following vendors provide the WAN optimization products and appliances.

• Cisco
• Juniper
• Blue Coat
• F5 Networks
• Silver Peak
• River Bed
• InMage
• Peribit

Most of the products provided by these vendors are the hardware based and some are the combination of hardware and software.

Juniper offers the following Networks Application Acceleration Platforms.

• WX Platforms

This platform is used to increase the application performance, application and data prioritization, WAN capacity and this platform delivers compressed output that travels at the speed 64 Kbps to 155 Mbps.

• WXC Platforms

WXC Platforms holds the on-board hard drives that are used to store the repeated data and that ultimately increase the WAN capacity by 100 folds.  WXC Platforms support the disk capacity from 40 GB to 3 TB and WAN links from 128 Kbps to 155 Mbps.

• WX CMS

WX CMS platform is used to manage multiple WX platforms and WXC platforms from one central location.  There are easy monitoring and configuration tools in this platform.  The main feature of the WX CMS is the application performance, WAN utilization, bandwidth allocation and QOS.

T1

T1 is a special type of fiber optic telephone line and it was developed by AT&T Bell Labs. T1 is the most commonly used digital transmission service in the United States. T1 line is capable of transferring the broadband digital data at very high speed i.e. 1.54 Mbps.  T1 is an expensive solution for data transmission as compared to the regular telephone lines. But the prices are tend to decrease as the demand grows.  Currently T1 is not cost effective for the home users.

A large number of the businesses in USA, Canada and Japan use T1 lines to connect to the internet.  There are different ways to provide T1 transmission such as twisted pair cables, coaxial cable modems, fiber optic systems, common careers and digital radios.

In large networks T1 signals can be boosted up to 100 miles by using the repeaters.  In telecommunication terminology, T1 is also known as DS1 and T1/DS1 is a method of connecting the digital communication systems with the telecommunication industry and North America.

E1

E1 is a digital data communication system for the European data transmission format.  E1 carries the data signals at the speed of 2 Mbps (Full duplex). E1 and T1 lines can be interconnected with each other for international data transmission.

E1/T1 are used for the leased lines transmission.  E1 is ideal for the voice traffic and it can carry 32 voice conversions.  An E1 line 32 64-Kbps channels and each channel may be used to send and receive data and voice.

E1/PR1 (Primary rate interface) supports 30 B channels and one D channel. Primary Rate Interface (PRI) configurations are used to receive multiple analog calls from the dial-in traffic and analog-modems.

T3

A T3 line is 30 times faster than the T1 line and it supports the data transfer rate 44 Mbps.  A T3 line is equivalent to 28 T1 circuits or lines and a T3 is also called a DS3.  T3 is a very high speed data transmission system and it is widely used on the internet.

A T3 is capable of carrying 672 voice circuits.  T3 connection is mostly used by the ISPs and corporate offices for permanent, high speed and uninterruptible internet access.