Apr 1999 NI222: Networks and the Internet (Question 1)

(a)	What is IETF? How does it disseminate information?	[4]
	IETF refer as Internet Engineering Task Force which is a voluntary organisation that received the latest technology regarding internet and publish it on the Internet draft and RCF(Request for Comment).
(b)	Explain the components of Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) with a suitable example.	[4]
	Example : WWW.NUS.EDU.SG WWW - refers to the network application used. NUS - refers to the name of the server within the zone. EDU - refers to the root domain in the name-space hierarchy. SG - refers to name of the country, under which the root domain exits.
(c)	Distinguish between compression and encryption. How are they related?	[4]
	Compressions is referring as reducing the size of the message using compressing technique such that more messages can be transfer over a given time frame comparing with non-compress message. Thus, cost can be reduce in terms of data transfer. Whereas encryption is to encrypt the data such as to prevent leakage of messages to unauthorise personnel. The receiver will required to de-crypt the messages. Thus, the receiver need to understand the type of application used (from the sender) to de-crypt the messages. There are related in such a way that if a compressed message u[on reaching the receiver are not decompressed, the message will be similar to a encrypted message. Therefore, it is important the receiver had the right application (from the sender) to decompress the message.
(d)	Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using the Shortest Path algorithm for routing in the network layer.	[4]
	Advantages Simple Algorithms It is able to determine the best path i.e. lowest cost, most efficient way to transmit the data. Disadvantages It had weak sum-error checking as it treat the data as 16- bits integer and complement by 1. This, if there is any error which by-pass the transport later, it is most likely that the error will not be detected. It is not able to react to traffic congestion due to the fact that shortest path algorithm is only finding the best path.
(e)	FTP treats some files in a special way. Does FTP recognise html pages? Explain your answer.	[2]
	No. The fact is file transfer protocol are for text structure based data whereas html consists of graphic, video data which file transger protocol is unable to do.
(f)	IP provides a simpler network service than TCP. In what ways is it different?	[2]
	The main differences between a IP against TCP is that IP does not guarantee or care whether the data is lost, damage during the sending whereas TCP will guarantee that the message is received by the receiver and if the message is lost or damage during the transmittion, TCP will re-transmit again. Thus, prevent any any lost of data which give a more reliable services.