23-04-2012, 02:01 PM
DATA COMMUNICATION AND SWITCHING SYSTEM
Eltom OPNET Report.docx (Size: 1.26 MB / Downloads: 39)
Introduction
The networking field starts to develop rapidly nowadays. Many companies start to use this network technologies and components in their different branches. In the other hand, many network companies start to show up with their new technology and start compete each other. Students in different field start learn about networking and its design even those who are not specialized in the network field such as managers and administrate. It is not easy to apply what student gain from the books in the real life components such as routers, switches, hubs and servers and workstations. It needs larg space to install these components and it needs many buddings to start configuring these devices. For sake of education, the simulator programs help students to gain the techniques and skills to connect and configure these devices.
In this project OPNT IT Guru Academic edition 9.1 is used to accomplish to design and simulate two labs. The first lab is Hubs versus Switches in Small Business LAN. The other one is Hubs versus switches in medium scale LAN. in these paper we will see differences between hubs and switched in both small and medium network and what are the benefits of each type of therm. Some configuration and edit are done in the simulator to start building the network. Specific cables with determined distance are fixed before start the design of the network.
Implementation
2.1 Hub- switch project for small scale LAN
By using the OPNT IT Guru Academic edition 9.1, there are 9 components as in Fig.1. There are 5 work stations which represent users. The work station are connected to an Ethernet server (Node_5) via Ethernet 16-hub. The other two nodes are application configuration and profile configuration as shown in node 7 and 8 respectively. By setting “Default” for the Application Definitions row inside the application node which makes all standard network applications available for use in our topology – HTTP, FTP, E-Mail, Database.
Results
Hubs and switches are both use to connect different workstation (e.g. User PC) to server or router, but they are different in their function and their time delay. The hubs are very dumb network devices. They allow all devices that are connected to it to communicate to each other. It makes no decisions about traffic direction. It doesn't inspect traffic quality or verify packet integrity. All network data it receives on one port will be immediately transmitted out all the other ports, so each computer must take its turn before sending data. This is called half-duplex, it is very inefficient.in the other hand, and switches can be considered a 'smart' hub. It will actively look at the traffic it receives and based on the destination address it will direct that traffic only to the port needed. A switch listens to each port at the same time without any interference. A computer plugged directly into the switch will not receive unnecessary traffic and can transmit to the switch whenever it needs to, this leaves all the bandwidth available to each machine. The switch memorizes the MAC address of each host and which port it resides on. This is how it can intelligently direct traffic. Switches can be many times more expensive than hubs, the costs keeps increasing as you look for more features. Features include bandwidth monitoring, Spanning Tree Protocol, being stackable (the ability to have a faster data transfer from one switch to another than the port speed).