COMP247 Data Communications

Assignment 2, 2015
Due: Monday 25th May, 2015, 6 pm
Value: 15%
This assignment is designed to help you develop skills and strengthen your
understanding of data communications. Answer the questions as if they are a
professional presentation to a client. Thus justify what you say in terms of what will
work well for the client. Your submission should be around 5 to 10 pages, but be
succinct. Your assignment will be submitted electronically as below with TurnItIn
on the COMP247 iLearn page.

Question 1 (5 marks) Wireless Networks

Research the differences between 802.11a, b, g, n, ac, ad (WiGig), ax, etc
technologies. What is their reach, speed, DSSS, or OFDM, kinds and numbers of
antennas, bandwidth, etc. Your report should include a summary table, but also a
written part for information that does not fit neatly in a table.

Question 2 (5 marks) Home Network Design

Lisa is building a new two-story house (which measures 15 meters long by 9 meters
wide) and wants to make sure that she can network her familys three computers
together. She and her husband are both consultants and work out of their home in
the evenings and a few days a month (each has a separate office with a computer,
plus a laptop from the office that they occasionally use). The kids also have a
computer in their playroom. They have several options for networking their home:
a. Wire the two offices and playroom with Ethernet cat 5e cable and put in a
100 base T switch for $40 approximately.
b. Install one Wi-Fi access point ($85) and put Wi-Fi cards in the three
computers for $50 each (their laptops already have Wi-Fi).
c. Any combination of these options.
What would you recommend? Justify your recommendation. (200 words)

Question 3 (5 marks) Backbone Networks

You have been hired as a network consultant by an large company called Soylent
Foods. Your job is to recommend an elegant solution to support their needs and to
address their current problems. The IT manager of Soylent Foods wants you to be
aware of the following facts:
The organization has 3 departments. All addressing is done using IP.
Key servers are currently randomly placed in different departments. So a user in
one department X reads and writes to file servers in another department Y.
Similarly, users in departments X and Y would read mails from a server in
department Z.
The traffic and broadcast storms originating in one department is causing
bandwidth saturation in other departments.
The core of the network is slow and is unable to meet the response time
requirements of various critical business applications.
Propose remedial solutions with adequate justification. In particular, in your
recommendation you need to suggest the following:
a) Core technology design.
b) Specific LAN technologies to be used in each department.
c) Specific design solutions to address inter-departmental traffic issues. ((600
words)

Assessment
For all questions in this assignment not only content but also presentation will affect your mark.
You will lose marks if there are problems with the presentation, particularly with clarity. This
means that your answers to each question should be a coherent statement and that the spelling and
grammar of your submission will be taken into account in assessing its presentation.
For full marks, your answers should all be correct, clear, and coherent.
The standards of marking described in the unit outline L.O. 1 will be applied to this assignment as
relevant to the assignment topics.
In addition, the following particular standards will be applied in marking this assignment:
Spelling and grammar:
o Assignment submissions with more than 4 spelling or grammatical errors will not
achieve a grade higher than distinction; submissions with more than 8 such errors
will not achieve a grade higher than credit.
Clarity:
o Ambiguous or poorly worded answers will receive a grade no more than a pass for
the individual question.
o Minor issues of clarity will receive a grade no more than credit for the individual
question.
Correctness of approach taken and answer obtained:
o Incorrect answers with the correct logic or approach will receive no more than a pass
for the individual question.
o Correct answers with incorrect logic or approach will receive no more than pass for
the individual question.
o Incorrect answers with no explanation of the approach taken or with the incorrect
approach will receive a fail grade for the individual question.
The questions will be marked individually, the marks totalled, and a final grade assigned that is no
more than indicated by the total marks, and no more than allowed by the standards specified
above and in the unit outline.

Submission
Submit on the iLearn page under Assignments Section. The submission is with a tool
called TurnItIn. This cross checks for online papers and other student papers for any
plagiarism (copying). In short DONT COPY or get others to do your assignment, we
are pretty good at catching people out and the consequences can be severe. Do not trust
anyone who will take money to do assignments. They can take money from several
students, return the same assignment, and you get caught. They dont care, but we do!