Week 8: Networks and wireless

Chapter Seven - Weekly Questions

1. Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology.

- Voice over IP: Allows the internet to carry voice in digital format, call costs have dramatically decreased as the international calls are now internet connections.

- Networking business:

Virtual private network (VPN) - a way to use the public telecommunication infrastructure (e.g. Internet) to provide secure access to an organisation’s network

Valued-added network (VAN) - a private network, provided by a third party, for exchanging information through a high capacity connection

- increasing the speed of business: terms such as bandwidth, hertz and baud are used to describe transmission speeds, whereas a measure such as bits transmitted per second would be more understandable.

- securing business networks: networks are a tempting target for mischief and fraud. An organization has to be concerned about proper identification of users and authorization of network access, the control of access and the protection of data integrity.

2. Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP

VOIP will benefit businesses in a number of ways ...

· cheaper telephony and lower operating costs

· many features at low cost

· easier to make changes

· easier to relocate

· can enable collaboration tools for an increasingly decentralised work force

· convergence provides lower cost WAN connectivity.

(http://www.alltel.com.au/voipbenefits.html

3. Compare LANs and WANs:

Local area networks (LANs) connect computers that reside in a single geographic location on the premises of the company that operates the LAN. A LAN in turn often connects to other LANs and to the Internet or Wide area network. While a Wide area networks (WANs) – connect computers at different geographic sites.

4. Describe RFID and how it can be used to help make a supply chain more effective.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies use active or passive tags in the form of chips or smart labels that can store unique identifiers and relay this information to electronic readers. It makes the supply chain as it reduces costs immensely

VIEW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zj7txoDxbE FOR GREATER INFORMATION.

5. Identify the advantages and disadvantage of deploying mobile technology

- Ubiquity – anywhere / anytime – technology cheap

- Convenience – Access quickly without a PC

- Instant Connectivity – No boot up, nothing technical

- Customisation – personalised information depending on location / tasted / preferences