Packet Switching Types: ATM, Frame Relay, TCP/IP, X.25

Transmission: SONET T-Carrier

Services: [3G] [4G] [Bluetooth] [I-Mode] [WAP] [Wireless and packet switching]

TCP/IP

TCP/IP stands for, get this, Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, a name only a geek could come up with. It's what makes the internet go, the backbone technology of the internet, and like all data com specifications, it's as dull as dirt.

TCP/IP is a collection or suite of protocols that permit internetworking between different computers and operating systems. It combines elements of switching and transmission. The internet is really just a huge collection of computers tied together by cable and telephone lines.

To keep all those machines connected and talking to each other you need a manager and a universal translator. That's what TCP/IP does: its packet switching protocols run over SONET or T-Carrier sent across the public telephone network. Or, when connecting computers up directly with each other, without any multiplexing system at all. In that case the media can be twisted pair or coax or fiber optic cable. It's TCP/IP's protocols that gets the data sent over the transmission media selected.

Good presentation on TCP/IP by Travis Russell from his book presented below (11 pages, 280K in .pdf)

Learning about TCP/IP in a practical way

From U.S. Patent 6,415,329, Method and apparatus for improving efficiency of TCP/IP protocol over high delay-bandwidth network

The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite that forms the basis of the Internet was designed and optimized to operate in a terrestrial environment. Despite this fact, TCP/IP will operate over an extremely large range of link conditions, albeit at reduced levels of performance when the assumptions inherent in its algorithms are violated. For instance, the high delay-bandwidth product and higher bit error rate of a satellite link results in a situation in which the satellite link is not efficiently utilized and the TCP/IP performance (as perceived by an interactive user) is poor.

The use of wireless links provides a very flexible way to extend networks where a wired infrastructure is not available or is not cost effective, but there are a number of important technical issues that need to be addressed. These issues revolve around the fact that most protocols are optimized to run on terrestrial networks. The primary differences between terrestrial and wireless connectivity are the link latency, the bit error rate (BER), and channel asymmetry. In a terrestrial system, error rate is typically low (<10.sup.-10) and the latency is short (<30 ms), while on a wireless link, the BER can range from 10.sup.-10 to 10.sup.-3 and, in some cases, the round trip latency can exceed 1.0 second. In addition, wireless links tend to be asymmetric with some systems having 100 times or more available capacity in one direction than the other."

Packet Switching Types: ATM, Frame Relay, TCP/IP, X.25

Transmission: SONET T-Carrier

Services: [3G] [4G] [Bluetooth] [I-Mode] [WAP] [Wireless and packet switching]