Week #6: Ethernet and Networking Concepts

[rjagodowski]

We will begin and spend the next couple of weeks discussing Ethernet and Networking concepts. Ethernet is the prevailing networking technology used to allow computers & peripherals to share resources and access.

From Wisc-Online:

A Presentation of Bandwidth

Bandwidth Capacity Techniques

High Speed Internet - Cabling

Data Flow on the Internet

Routers

IP Addressing & Subnetting

What is DHCP? This website has some other cool IP related information in case you want to snoop around.

The Difference between Dynamic & Static IP Addresses.

More info on IP networks:

IP Address Classes and Subnetting from TutorialsPoint.com. There are other good tutorials on this site about networking as well. As for subnetting, understand that the concept and reason for subnetting is to organize and separate different networks as well as offering more devices to communicate within a given structure. If you have learned how to "subnet" from previous courses...GREAT! If not, don't worry about it at this time, other than to understand why it is needed. IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) has different requirements.

IP Address classes from Microsoft

IP Address Classes and IP Address Calculator

Public & Private IP Addresses

How to Set Up a Private Network.

IPv4 vs. IPv6


From the practical side, here is a tutorial on how to make/repair a CAT5/5e/6 ethernet cable: How to Make Your Own Ethernet Cable from cnet.com .

Wireless Hardware (NOTE: Bluetooth IS NOT infrared, as this presentation suggests. It is a PAN (Personal Area Network), however.) For some additional background about the Electro-Magnetic Spectrum, check out this link which has a quick calculator to relate frequency and wavelength for various EM waves. Photon energy is inversely proportional to the wavelength of the EM wave. Shorter wavelengths have greater energy, longer wavelengths have less energy. Here is an interesting (and historical) presentation on the development of photon theory: What is a Photon?

We mentioned this in the past, but the here are two videos to help show the polarization of an EM wave.
Polarization of Light (1:40)

Then there is this presentation which is a deeper presentation of the mechanisms of linear and circular polarization. Polarized Light from Kahn Academy (14:29)

A little bit lighter, but perhaps more applicable to your daily activities, there is this video on How Do Polarized Sunglasses Work? (6:21)


And this document probably has more on antenna design than you want to know:

Antenna.pdf

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Here's a link to the Cisco Learning Network Store. Cisco is a leading provider of network equipment on all levels of the market and is also instrumental in creating instructional material to help train network technicians in a variety of IT related tasks.


Wireless Sensor Networks in Industrial Automation Here is the link to the complete Factory Automation Text with pdf download here:

Wireless Sensor Networks in Industrial Automation.pdf

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Here's a pdf on Wireless Sensor Networks for Industrial Process Monitoring and Control:

Wireless Sensor Networks for Industrial Process Monitoring and Control_580-3097-1-PB.pdf

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Wikipedia on M2M Just read the first paragraph or so to get the definition of M2M.

50 Sensor Applications for a Smarter World


Many wireless data systems use a form of "Spread Spectrum" (SS) communications. This of wide band communication scheme. This is a crude example, but think of the FM radio band. You want to tune into WAQY, so you adjust the tuner to 102.1 MHz and there it is. All of the time. FM commercial radio stations always transmit at the same frequency. That makes them easy to find. However, it also is not necessarily an efficient use of the total spectrum space of the FM band (roughly 88 MHz to 108 MHz, 20 MHz bandwidth). Each radio station must be separated by at least 200 kHz from an adjacent station to minimize interference. Spread Spectrum communication would have our WAQY transmitted distribute (spread) its content over the entire 20 MHz FM spectrum. There are different ways of implementing this, but using our radio example, one way would be to use Frequency Hopping where WAQY would transmit at 102.1 MHz for a short period of time, then switch to 93.1 MHZ,a then 94.7 MHz, then 106.9 MHz, etc. Obviously, this would require the receiver (your radio) to tune into the same frequencies at the same times. It sounds complicated, but this tends to have numerous advantages principally in the way in which it fully utilizes the spectrum space (bandwidth), can support multiple users simultaneously, and noise immunity. These types of signals also offer a high level of security against "eaves-dropping" and a high resistance to jamming.

An Introduction to Spread Spectrum Communications.

The Difference Between Bit rate and Baud rate, more than one Bit per Baud.

QAM Comparison from Radio-Electronics.com

QAM from National Instruments.

QAM Tutorial (Pay special attention to Figures 3 & 4.

QAM Tutorial.pdf

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