Telecommunication
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the modern age of electricity and electronics, telecommunications has typically involved the use of electric means such as the telegraph, the telephone, and the teletype, the use of microwave communications, the use of fiber optics and their associated electronics, and/or the use of the Internet. The first breakthrough into modern electrical telecommunications came with the development of the telegraph during the 1830s and 1840s. The use of these electrical means of communications exploded into use on all of the continents of the world during the 19th century, and these also connected the continents via cables on the floors of the ocean. These three systems of communications all required the use of conducting metal wires.
A revolution in wireless telecommunications began in the first decade of the 20th Century, with Guglielmo Marconi winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 for his pioneering developments in wireless radio communications. Other early inventors and developers in the field of electrical and electronic telecommunications included Samuel F.B. Morse and Joseph Henry of the United States, Alexander Graham Bell of Canada, Lee de Forest of the U.S., who invented the amplifying vacuum tube called the triode, Edwin Armstrong of the U.S., John Logie Baird of England, and Nikola Tesla whose most important inventions were created in the United States.
Telecommunications play an important role in the world economy and the worldwide telecommunication industry's revenue was estimated to be $3.85 trillion in 2008.[1] The service revenue of the global telecommunications industry was estimated to be $1.7 trillion in 2008, and is expected to touch $2.7 trillion by 2013.[1]
Contents[show] |
[edit] History
For more details on this topic, see History of telecommunication.
[edit] Early telecommunications
In 1792, Claude Chappe, a French engineer, built the first fixed visual telegraphy system (or semaphore line) between Lille and Paris.[3] However semaphore systems suffered from the need for skilled operators and the expensive towers at intervals of ten to thirty kilometers (six to nineteen miles). As a result of competition from the electrical telegraph, the last commercial line was abandoned in 1880.[4]
[edit] The Telegraph and the Telephone
The first commercial electrical telegraph was constructed by Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke, and its use began on April 9, 1839. Both Wheatstone and Cooke viewed their device as "an improvement to the [already-existing, so-called] electromagnetic telegraph" not as a new device.[5]The businessman Samuel F.B. Morse and the physicist Joseph Henry of the United States developed their own, simpler version of the electrical telegraph, independently. Morse successfully demonstrated this system on September 2, 1837. Morse's most important technical contribution to this telegraph was the rather simple and highly efficient Morse Code, which was an important advance over Wheatstone's telegraph system. The communications efficiency of the Morse Code anticipated that of the Huffman code in digital communications by over 100 years, but Morse had developed his code purely empirically, unlike Huffman, who gave a detailed theoretical explanation of how his method worked.
The first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully completed on 27 July 1866, allowing transatlantic electrical communication for the first time.[6] An earlier transatlantic cable had operated for a few months in 1859, and among other things, it carried messages of greeting back and forth between President James Buchanan of the United States and Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.
However, this transatlantic cable failed soon, and the project to lay a replacement line was delayed for five years by the Civil War in the U.S. Also, these transatlantic cables would have been completely incapable of carrying telephone calls even had the telephone already been invented. The first transatlantic telephone cable (which incorporated hundreds of electronic amplifiers) was not operational until 1956.[7]
The conventional telephone now in use worldwide was first patented by Alexander Graham Bell in March 1876.[8] That first patent by Bell was the master patent of the telephone, from which all other patents for electric telephone devices and features flowed. Credit for the invention of the electric telephone has been frequently disputed, and new controversies over the issue have arisen from time-to-time. As with other great inventions such as radio, television, the light bulb, and the digital computer, there were several inventors who did pioneering experimental work on voice transmission over a wire, and then improved on each other's ideas. However, the key innovators were Alexander Graham Bell and Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who created the first telephone company, the Bell Telephone Company of the United States, which later evolved into American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T).
The first commercial telephone services were set up in 1878 and 1879 on both sides of the Atlantic in the cities of New Haven, Connecticut, and London, England.[9][10]
[edit] Radio and television
In 1832, James Lindsay gave a classroom demonstration of wireless telegraphy via conductive water to his students. By 1854, he was able to demonstrate a transmission across the Firth of Tay from Dundee, Scotland, to Woodhaven, a distance of about two miles (3 km), again using water as the transmission medium.[11] In December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi established wireless communication between St. John's, Newfoundland (Canada) and Poldhu, Cornwall (England), earning him the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1909, one which he shared with Karl Braun.[12] However small-scale radio communication had already been demonstrated in 1893 by Nikola Tesla in a presentation before the National Electric Light Association.[13]On March 25, 1925, John Logie Baird of England was able to demonstrate the transmission of moving pictures at the Selfridge's department store in London, England. Baird's system relied upon the fast-rotating Nipkow disk, and thus it became known as the mechanical television. It formed the basis of experimental broadcasts done by the British Broadcasting Corporation beginning September 30, 1929.[14] However, for most of the 20th Century television systems were designed around the cathode ray tube, invented by Karl Braun. The first version of such a television to show promise was produced by Philo Farnsworth of the United States, and it was demonstrated to his family in Idaho on September 7, 1927.[15]
[edit] Computer networks and the Internet
On 11 September 1940, George Stibitz was able to transmit problems using teletype to his Complex Number Calculator in New York and receive the computed results back at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.[16] This configuration of a centralized computer or mainframe with remote dumb terminals remained popular throughout the 1950s. However, it was not until the 1960s that researchers started to investigate packet switching — a technology that would allow chunks of data to be sent to different computers without first passing through a centralized mainframe. A four-node network emerged on 5 December 1969; this network would become ARPANET, which by 1981 would consist of 213 nodes.[17]ARPANET's development centred around the Request for Comment process and on 7 April 1969, RFC 1 was published. This process is important because ARPANET would eventually merge with other networks to form the Internet and many of the protocols the Internet relies upon today were specified through the Request for Comment process. In September 1981, RFC 791 introduced the Internet Protocol v4 (IPv4) and RFC 793 introduced the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) — thus creating the TCP/IP protocol that much of the Internet relies upon today.
However, not all important developments were made through the Request for Comment process. Two popular link protocols for local area networks (LANs) also appeared in the 1970s. A patent for the token ring protocol was filed by Olof Soderblom on 29 October 1974, and a paper on the Ethernet protocol was published by Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs in the July 1976 issue of Communications of the ACM.[18][19] The Ethernet protocol had been inspired by the ALOHAnet protocol which had been developed by electrical engineering researchers at the University of Hawaii.
[edit] Key concepts
| Etymology |
| The word telecommunication was adapted from the French word télécommunication. It is a compound of the Greek prefix tele- (τηλε-), meaning 'far off', and the Latin communicare, meaning 'to share'.[20] The French word télécommunication was coined in 1904 by French engineer and novelist Édouard Estaunié.[21] |
[edit] Basic elements
A basic telecommunication system consists of three primary units that are always present in some form:I. A transmitter that takes information and converts it to a signal.
II. A transmission medium, also called the "physical channel" that carries the signal. An example of this is the "free space channel".
III. A receiver that takes the signal from the channel and converts it back into usable information.
For example, in a radio broadcasting station the station's large power amplifier is the transmitter; and the broadcasting antenna is the interface between the power amplifier and the "free space channel". The free space channel is the transmission medium; and the receiver's antenna is the interface between the free space channel and the receiver. Next, the radio receiver is the destination of the radio signal, and this is where it is converted from electricity to sound for people to listen to.
Sometimes telecommunication systems are "duplex" (two-way) with a single box of electronics working as both a transmitter and a receiver, or a transceiver. For example, a cellular telephone is a transceiver.[22] The transmission electronics and the receiver electronics in a transceiver are actually quite independent of each other. This can be readily explained by the fact that radio transmitters contain power amplifiers that operate with electrical powers measured in the watts or kilowatts, but radio receivers deal with radio powers that are measured in the microwatts or nanowatts. Hence, transceivers have to be carefully designed and built to isolate their high-power circuitry and their low-power circuitry from each other.
Telecommunication over telephone lines is called point-to-point communication because it is between one transmitter and one receiver. Telecommunication through radio broadcasts is called broadcast communication because it is between one powerful transmitter and numerous low-power but sensitive receivers.[22]
[edit] Analog or Digital Communications?
Communications signals can be either by analog signals or digital signals. These are analog communication systems and digital communication systems. For an analog signal, the signal is varied continuously with respect to the information. In a digital signal, the information is encoded as a set of discrete values (for example, a set of ones and zeros). During the propagation and reception, the information contained in analog signals will inevitably be degraded by undesirable physical noise. (The output of a transmitter is noise-free for all practical purposes.) Commonly, the noise in a communication system can be expressed as adding or subtracting from the desirable signal in a completely random way. This form of noise is called "additive noise", with the understanding that the noise can be negative or positive at different instants of time. Noise that is not additive noise is a much more difficult situation to describe or analyze, and these other kinds of noise will be omitted here.On the other hand, unless the additive noise disturbance exceeds a certain threshold, the information contained in digital signals will remain intact. Their resistance to noise represents a key advantage of digital signals over analog signals.[23]
[edit] Communications Networks
A communications network is a collection of transmitters, receivers, and communications channels that send messages to one another. Some digital communications networks contain one or more routers that work together to transmit information to the correct user. An analog communications network consists of one or more switches that establish a connection between two or more users. For both types of network, repeaters may be necessary to amplify or recreate the signal when it is being transmitted over long distances. This is to combat attenuation that can render the signal indistinguishable from the noise.[24][edit] Communication Channels
The term "channel" is an ambiguous one that has two different meanings, but they are easily sorted out by their contexts in practice. One meaning of a "channel" is simply the physical medium that exists between the transmitter and the receiver. Examples of this meaning of channel include the atmosphere for sound communications, glass optical fibers for some kinds of optical communications, coaxial cables for communications by way of voltages and electric currents in them, and free space for communications using visible light, infrared waves, ultraviolet light, and radio waves. This channel is called, simply enough, the "free space channel". Note that the sending of radio waves from one place to another has absolutely nothing to do with the presence or absence of an atmosphere between the two. Radio waves travel through a perfect vacuum just as easily as they travel through air, fog, clouds, or any other kind of gas besides air. The term "on the air" for a radio or TV station transmitting is an archaic one dating back ninety years or more - to a time when 99.9% of people did not understand what was going on in a radio system.The other meaning of the term "channel" in telecommunications is as follows. This kind of a communications channel is some variety of subdivision of a transmission medium so that it can be used to send multiple streams of information simultaneously. For example, one radio station can broadcast radio waves into free space at frequencies in the neighborhood of 94.5 MHz while another radio station can also broadcast radio waves at frequencies in the neighborhood of 96.1 MHz. In the practical cases, each of these radio stations is allowed to transmit radio waves over a frequency bandwidth of about 180 kHz,centered at frequencies such as the above, which are called their "carrier frequencies". Each station in this example is separated from its adjacent stations by 200 kHz, and the difference between 200 kHz and 180 kHz equaling 20 kHz is an engineering allowance for the inperfections in the communication system - which is something that we always have to allow for.
In the example above, the "free space channel" has been divided into communications channels according to frequencies, and each channel is assigned to a separate frequency bandwidth to broadcast radio waves into. This system of dividing the medium into channels according to frequency is called, simply enough, "frequency-division multiplexing" (FDM).
Another way of dividing up a communications medium into channels is to allocate to each sender a recurring segment of time ("time slots" such as 20 milliseconds out of each second), and to allow each sender to send messages only within its own time slot. This method of dividing up the medium into communication channels is called, simply enough, "time-division multiplexing" (TDM), and is always used in optical fiber communication.[24][25] On the other hand, there are radio communication systems that use TDM, but these systems always use FDM at the same time, because their allocated bandwidths are limited. Hence, these systems use a hybrid of TDM and FDM.
[edit] Modulation
The shaping of a signal to convey information is known as modulation. Modulation can be used to represent a digital message as an analog waveform. This is known as keying and several keying techniques exist (these include phase-shift keying, frequency-shift keying and amplitude-shift keying). Bluetooth, for example, uses phase-shift keying to exchange information between devices.[26][27]Modulation can also be used to transmit the information of analog signals at higher frequencies. This is helpful because low-frequency analog signals cannot be effectively transmitted over free space. Hence the information from a low-frequency analog signal must be superimposed on a higher-frequency signal (known as the carrier wave) before transmission. There are several different modulation schemes available to achieve this (two of the most basic being amplitude modulation and frequency modulation). An example of this process is a DJ's voice being superimposed on a 96 MHz carrier wave using frequency modulation (the voice would then be received on a radio as the channel "96 FM").[28]
[edit] Society and telecommunication
Telecommunication has a significant social, cultural and economic impact on modern society. In 2008, estimates placed the telecommunication industry's revenue at $3.85 trillion (USD) or just under 3% of the gross world product (official exchange rate).[1] The following sections discuss the impact of telecommunication on society.[edit] Economic impact
[edit] Microeconomics
On the microeconomic scale, companies have used telecommunication to help build global empires. This is self-evident in the case of online retailer Amazon.com but, according to academic Edward Lenert, even the conventional retailer Wal-Mart has benefited from better telecommunication infrastructure compared to its competitors.[29] In cities throughout the world, home owners use their telephones to organize many home services ranging from pizza deliveries to electricians. Even relatively poor communities have been noted to use telecommunication to their advantage. In Bangladesh's Narshingdi district, isolated villagers use cell phones to speak directly to wholesalers and arrange a better price for their goods. In Cote d'Ivoire, coffee growers share mobile phones to follow hourly variations in coffee prices and sell at the best price.[30][edit] Macroeconomics
On the macroeconomic scale, Lars-Hendrik Röller and Leonard Waverman suggested a causal link between good telecommunication infrastructure and economic growth.[31] Few dispute the existence of a correlation although some argue it is wrong to view the relationship as causal.[32]Because of the economic benefits of good telecommunication infrastructure, there is increasing worry about the inequitable access to telecommunication services amongst various countries of the world—this is known as the digital divide. A 2003 survey by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) revealed that roughly one-third of countries have fewer than one mobile subscription for every 20 people and one-third of countries have fewer than one land-line telephone subscription for every 20 people. In terms of Internet access, roughly half of all countries have fewer than one out of 20 people with Internet access. From this information, as well as educational data, the ITU was able to compile an index that measures the overall ability of citizens to access and use information and communication technologies.[33] Using this measure, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland received the highest ranking while the African countries Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mali received the lowest.[34]
[edit] Social impact
Telecommunication has played a significant role in social relationships. Nevertheless devices like the telephone were originally advertised with an emphasis on the practical dimensions of the device (such as the ability to conduct business or order home services) as opposed to the social dimensions. It was not until the late 1920s and 1930s that the social dimensions of the device became a prominent theme in telephone advertisements. New promotions started appealing to consumers' emotions, stressing the importance of social conversations and staying connected to family and friends.[35]Since then the role that telecommunications has played in social relations has become increasingly important. In recent years, the popularity of social networking sites has increased dramatically. These sites allow users to communicate with each other as well as post photographs, events and profiles for others to see. The profiles can list a person's age, interests, sexuality and relationship status. In this way, these sites can play important role in everything from organising social engagements to courtship.[36]
Prior to social networking sites, technologies like SMS and the telephone also had a significant impact on social interactions. In 2000, market research group Ipsos MORI reported that 81% of 15 to 24 year-old SMS users in the United Kingdom had used the service to coordinate social arrangements and 42% to flirt.[37]
[edit] Other impacts
In cultural terms, telecommunication has increased the public's ability to access to music and film. With television, people can watch films they have not seen before in their own home without having to travel to the video store or cinema. With radio and the Internet, people can listen to music they have not heard before without having to travel to the music store.Telecommunication has also transformed the way people receive their news. A survey by the non-profit Pew Internet and American Life Project found that when just over 3,000 people living in the United States were asked where they got their news "yesterday", more people said television or radio than newspapers. The results are summarised in the following table (the percentages add up to more than 100% because people were able to specify more than one source).[38]
| Local TV | National TV | Radio | Local paper | Internet | National paper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 59% | 47% | 44% | 38% | 23% | 12% |
| Internet | Radio | Cable TV | Syndicated TV | Spot TV | Network TV | Newspaper | Magazine | Outdoor | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Percent | 7.6% | 7.2% | 12.1% | 2.8% | 11.3% | 17.1% | 18.9% | 20.4% | 2.7% | 100.1% |
| Dollars | $11.31 billion | $10.69 billion | $18.02 billion | $4.17 billion | $16.82 billion | $25.42 billion | $28.22 billion | $30.33 billion | $4.02 billion | $149 billion |
[edit] Telecommunication and government
Many countries have enacted legislation which conform to the International Telecommunication Regulations establish by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which is the "leading United Nations agency for information and communication technology issues."[40] In 1947, at the Atlantic City Conference, the ITU decided to "afford international protection to all frequencies registered in a new international frequency list and used in conformity with the Radio Regulation." According to the ITU's Radio Regulations adopted in Atlantic City, all frequencies referenced in the International Frequency Registration Board, examined by the board and registered on the International Frequency List "shall have the right to international protection from harmful interference."[41]From a global perspective, there have been political debates and legislation regarding the management of telecommunication and broadcasting. The history of broadcasting discusses some of debates in relation to balancing conventional communication such as printing and telecommunication such as radio broadcasting.[42] The onset of World War II brought on the first explosion of international broadcasting propaganda.[42] Countries, their governments, insurgents, terrorists, and militiamen have all used telecommunication and broadcasting techniques to promote propaganda.[42][43] Patriotic propaganda for political movements and colonization started the mid 1930s. In 1936, the BBC did broadcast propaganda to the Arab World to partly counter similar broadcasts from Italy, which also had colonial interests in North Africa.[42]
Modern insurgents, such as those in the latest Iraq war, often use intimidating telephone calls, SMSs and the distribution of sophisticated videos of an attack on coalition troops within hours of the operation. "The Sunni insurgents even have their own television station, Al-Zawraa, which while banned by the Iraqi government, still broadcasts from Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, even as coalition pressure has forced it to switch satellite hosts several times." [43]
[edit] Modern operation
[edit] Telephone
The fixed-line telephones in most residential homes are analog — that is, the speaker's voice directly determines the signal's voltage. Although short-distance calls may be handled from end-to-end as analog signals, increasingly telephone service providers are transparently converting the signals to digital for transmission before converting them back to analog for reception. The advantage of this is that digitized voice data can travel side-by-side with data from the Internet and can be perfectly reproduced in long distance communication (as opposed to analog signals that are inevitably impacted by noise).
Mobile phones have had a significant impact on telephone networks. Mobile phone subscriptions now outnumber fixed-line subscriptions in many markets. Sales of mobile phones in 2005 totalled 816.6 million with that figure being almost equally shared amongst the markets of Asia/Pacific (204 m), Western Europe (164 m), CEMEA (Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa) (153.5 m), North America (148 m) and Latin America (102 m).[46] In terms of new subscriptions over the five years from 1999, Africa has outpaced other markets with 58.2% growth.[47] Increasingly these phones are being serviced by systems where the voice content is transmitted digitally such as GSM or W-CDMA with many markets choosing to depreciate analog systems such as AMPS.[48]
There have also been dramatic changes in telephone communication behind the scenes. Starting with the operation of TAT-8 in 1988, the 1990s saw the widespread adoption of systems based on optic fibres. The benefit of communicating with optic fibers is that they offer a drastic increase in data capacity. TAT-8 itself was able to carry 10 times as many telephone calls as the last copper cable laid at that time and today's optic fibre cables are able to carry 25 times as many telephone calls as TAT-8.[49] This increase in data capacity is due to several factors: First, optic fibres are physically much smaller than competing technologies. Second, they do not suffer from crosstalk which means several hundred of them can be easily bundled together in a single cable.[50] Lastly, improvements in multiplexing have led to an exponential growth in the data capacity of a single fibre.[51][52]
Assisting communication across many modern optic fibre networks is a protocol known as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). The ATM protocol allows for the side-by-side data transmission mentioned in the second paragraph. It is suitable for public telephone networks because it establishes a pathway for data through the network and associates a traffic contract with that pathway. The traffic contract is essentially an agreement between the client and the network about how the network is to handle the data; if the network cannot meet the conditions of the traffic contract it does not accept the connection. This is important because telephone calls can negotiate a contract so as to guarantee themselves a constant bit rate, something that will ensure a caller's voice is not delayed in parts or cut-off completely.[53] There are competitors to ATM, such as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), that perform a similar task and are expected to supplant ATM in the future.[54]
[edit] Radio and television
The broadcast media industry is at a critical turning point in its development, with many countries moving from analog to digital broadcasts. This move is made possible by the production of cheaper, faster and more capable integrated circuits. The chief advantage of digital broadcasts is that they prevent a number of complaints with traditional analog broadcasts. For television, this includes the elimination of problems such as snowy pictures, ghosting and other distortion. These occur because of the nature of analog transmission, which means that perturbations due to noise will be evident in the final output. Digital transmission overcomes this problem because digital signals are reduced to discrete values upon reception and hence small perturbations do not affect the final output. In a simplified example, if a binary message 1011 was transmitted with signal amplitudes [1.0 0.0 1.0 1.0] and received with signal amplitudes [0.9 0.2 1.1 0.9] it would still decode to the binary message 1011 — a perfect reproduction of what was sent. From this example, a problem with digital transmissions can also be seen in that if the noise is great enough it can significantly alter the decoded message. Using forward error correction a receiver can correct a handful of bit errors in the resulting message but too much noise will lead to incomprehensible output and hence a breakdown of the transmission.[56][57]
In digital television broadcasting, there are three competing standards that are likely to be adopted worldwide. These are the ATSC, DVB and ISDB standards; the adoption of these standards thus far is presented in the captioned map. All three standards use MPEG-2 for video compression. ATSC uses Dolby Digital AC-3 for audio compression, ISDB uses Advanced Audio Coding (MPEG-2 Part 7) and DVB has no standard for audio compression but typically uses MPEG-1 Part 3 Layer 2.[58][59] The choice of modulation also varies between the schemes. In digital audio broadcasting, standards are much more unified with practically all countries choosing to adopt the Digital Audio Broadcasting standard (also known as the Eureka 147 standard). The exception being the United States which has chosen to adopt HD Radio. HD Radio, unlike Eureka 147, is based upon a transmission method known as in-band on-channel transmission that allows digital information to "piggyback" on normal AM or FM analog transmissions.[60]
However, despite the pending switch to digital, analog television remains being transmitted in most countries. An exception is the United States that ended analog television transmission (by all but the very low-power TV stations) on the 12th of June 2009[61] after twice delaying the switch over deadline. For analog television, there are three standards in use for broadcasting color TV (see a map on adoption here). These are known as PAL (British designed), NTSC (North American designed), and SECAM (French designed). (It is important to understand that these are the ways from sending color TV, and they do not have anything to do with the standards for black & white TV, which also vary from country to country. For analog radio, the switch to digital radio is made more difficult by the fact that analog receivers are sold at a small fraction of the price of digital receivers.[62][63] The choice of modulation for analog radio is typically between amplitude modulation (AM) or frequency modulation (FM). To achieve stereo playback, an amplitude modulated subcarrier is used for stereo FM.
[edit] The Internet
The Internet is a worldwide network of computers and computer networks that can communicate with each other using the Internet Protocol.[64] Any computer on the Internet has a unique IP address that can be used by other computers to route information to it. Hence, any computer on the Internet can send a message to any other computer using its IP address. These messages carry with them the originating computer's IP address allowing for two-way communication. The Internet is thus an exchange of messages between computers.[65]
As of 2008[update], an estimated 21.9% of the world population has access to the Internet with the highest access rates (measured as a percentage of the population) in North America (73.6%), Oceania/Australia (59.5%) and Europe (48.1%).[66] In terms of broadband access, Iceland (26.7%), South Korea (25.4%) and the Netherlands (25.3%) led the world.[67]
The Internet works in part because of protocols that govern how the computers and routers communicate with each other. The nature of computer network communication lends itself to a layered approach where individual protocols in the protocol stack run more-or-less independently of other protocols. This allows lower-level protocols to be customized for the network situation while not changing the way higher-level protocols operate. A practical example of why this is important is because it allows an Internet browser to run the same code regardless of whether the computer it is running on is connected to the Internet through an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection. Protocols are often talked about in terms of their place in the OSI reference model (pictured on the right), which emerged in 1983 as the first step in an unsuccessful attempt to build a universally adopted networking protocol suite.[68]
For the Internet, the physical medium and data link protocol can vary several times as packets traverse the globe. This is because the Internet places no constraints on what physical medium or data link protocol is used. This leads to the adoption of media and protocols that best suit the local network situation. In practice, most intercontinental communication will use the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol (or a modern equivalent) on top of optic fibre. This is because for most intercontinental communication the Internet shares the same infrastructure as the public switched telephone network.
At the network layer, things become standardized with the Internet Protocol (IP) being adopted for logical addressing. For the World Wide Web, these "IP addresses" are derived from the human readable form using the Domain Name System (e.g. 72.14.207.99 is derived from www.google.com). At the moment, the most widely used version of the Internet Protocol is version four but a move to version six is imminent.[69]
At the transport layer, most communication adopts either the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). TCP is used when it is essential every message sent is received by the other computer where as UDP is used when it is merely desirable. With TCP, packets are retransmitted if they are lost and placed in order before they are presented to higher layers. With UDP, packets are not ordered or retransmitted if lost. Both TCP and UDP packets carry port numbers with them to specify what application or process the packet should be handled by.[70] Because certain application-level protocols use certain ports, network administrators can manipulate traffic to suit particular requirements. Examples are to restrict Internet access by blocking the traffic destined for a particular port or to affect the performance of certain applications by assigning priority.
Above the transport layer, there are certain protocols that are sometimes used and loosely fit in the session and presentation layers, most notably the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols. These protocols ensure that the data transferred between two parties remains completely confidential and one or the other is in use when a padlock appears in the address bar of your web browser.[71] Finally, at the application layer, are many of the protocols Internet users would be familiar with such as HTTP (web browsing), POP3 (e-mail), FTP (file transfer), IRC (Internet chat), BitTorrent (file sharing) and OSCAR (instant messaging).
[edit] Local area networks
Despite the growth of the Internet, the characteristics of local area networks (computer networks that do not run beyond a few kilometres) remain distinct. This is because networks on this scale do not require all the features associated with larger networks and are often more cost-effective and efficient without them.In the mid-1980s, several protocol suites emerged to fill the gap between the data link and applications layer of the OSI reference model. These were Appletalk, IPX and NetBIOS with the dominant protocol suite during the early 1990s being IPX due to its popularity with MS-DOS users. TCP/IP existed at this point but was typically only used by large government and research facilities.[72] As the Internet grew in popularity and a larger percentage of traffic became Internet-related, local area networks gradually moved towards TCP/IP and today networks mostly dedicated to TCP/IP traffic are common. The move to TCP/IP was helped by technologies such as DHCP that allowed TCP/IP clients to discover their own network address — a functionality that came standard with the AppleTalk/IPX/NetBIOS protocol suites.[73]
It is at the data link layer though that most modern local area networks diverge from the Internet. Whereas Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) or Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) are typical data link protocols for larger networks, Ethernet and Token Ring are typical data link protocols for local area networks. These protocols differ from the former protocols in that they are simpler (e.g. they omit features such as Quality of Service guarantees) and offer collision prevention. Both of these differences allow for more economic set-ups.[74]
Despite the modest popularity of Token Ring in the 80's and 90's, virtually all local area networks now use wired or wireless Ethernet. At the physical layer, most wired Ethernet implementations use copper twisted-pair cables (including the common 10BASE-T networks). However, some early implementations used coaxial cables and some recent implementations (especially high-speed ones) use optic fibres.[75] Where optic fibre is used, the distinction must be made between multi-mode fibre and single-mode fibre. Multi-mode fibre can be thought of as thicker optical fibre that is cheaper to manufacture devices for but that suffers from less usable bandwidth and greater attenuation (i.e. poor long-distance performance).[76]
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