Exercise 3

Domain Name Service is a service which translates IP addresses into words. DNS was developed to translate numeric binary identifiers associated with networking addresses into domain names that are meaningful for humans, and vice-versa. For example, http://www.google.com.au/ is much easier to remember and determine where you are actually going than the IP address 66.102.11.99. DNS will become even more important when IPv6 takes over from IPv4, in possibly the not too distant future.

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is a service which is used by devices to automatically obtain configuration information necessary to operate in an IP network. DHCP servers send information to clients on the network such as IP addresses, subnet mask and the default gateway etc.

The main differing feature of DNS and DHCP is the information given by both, DHCP allocates the IP configuration information for a device and DNS allocates a meaningful name for an IP address.

It becomes important for an online business application to use a static IP address rather than a dynamically assigned one from DHCP because DHCP allocates the next available IP address to a device, let’s say 'device1'. This can be an issue if another device, 'device2', receives the IP information that was originally used by 'device1', this will result in the DNS table being incorrect and using the domain name will result in 'device1' being inaccessible. The DNS server can resolve this issue but it takes time and any time that the device is inaccessible is money lost in the business world.

A Virtual Private Network could be used in a Business to Business system to allow the secure transfer of client and mission critical data between business sites or clients. A VPN can also give a means of securely connecting to a private part of a business’s website. VPN's can be useful to business by segregating networks into departments of a business rather than the geographical location.

Grid computing is a combination of computer resources are collectively used to manipulate and process data. Grid computing is commonly used when needing a great number of computing cycles or there is a need to process large amounts of data. This allows smaller businesses the chance to utilise their computing power to meet the demand without having to fork out thousands of dollars to buy a new server.

The next generation of wireless mesh networks will aid businesses in the cost of wired networks and increase the mobility of its staff. Wireless mesh networks are made up of multiple wireless nodes overlapping to produce a much larger network coverage area, this will allow staff to roam anywhere within the coverage area without losing good quality coverage or connection to the network.

Cloud applications can be used in business to aid in clients not needing to run some applications on their local machine. Other types of cloud applications such as P2P systems remove the need for data to be stored on a server, instead the data is stored and load balanced between the peers connecting to each other.

Cloud computing may be viewed as a 'black box' because it is not necessary to know the inner workings of the system to be able to get the most out of it. All that is needed is the appropriate information to be able to connect and receive information from it, for example in a P2P network. Grid computing is known as a 'white box' because in order to get the most efficiency out of the grid computing setup, you must know the inner workings of the system and load balance processing between them.