ITS 145: Intro to Information Systems Instructor: Mark Jamil Course website: www.markjamil.com Contact email: questions@markjamil.com

In class Assignment Using Linux, set up a web server on your laptop! Install any version of Linux you prefer. I recommend sticking with big market distros so that you can find help and documentation easily. Popular Linux distros include Mint Linux (based on Ubuntu) – Easy for Windows/Mac users Debian Ubuntu (based on Debian) Red Hat Zorin (looks like Windows 7) Elementary (based on Ubuntu) – Designed for Windows/Mac users Alpine – Tiny 150MB OS designed with security in mind Once you have linux running, you need to install either Apache or Nginx web servers. You will need to do a little bit of reading to figure out how to install them on the OS you selecting. Once installed, you must remember to start the service! Once it is installed, text to make sure it works. If everything is working, find the “www” directory and edit your homepage (usually index.html). In the body section of this page, insert the following statement: “Hello World! My name is (insert your 1st and last name).” Please refrain from using “ready made” installations like Turnkey. I would like you to do the installation yourself using either command line or the software management tools in the GUI. Also please do not use Docker or Linux containers (for the same reason).

Networking Intro Networking is the act of connecting computers in such a way as to allow them to share resources and data. The most popular network protocols are Ethernet Infiniband Fiber Channel Wireless

Ethernet The Ethernet protocol is the most dominant in the world. It is an open protocol supported by almost everyone in the IT world. Commonly uses 4 pairs of copper wires for connectivity. The difference between copper cables is how they are wrapped and shielded. Modern speeds are 1GB/s and 10GB/s. 40/100 GB/s Ethernet is already available but very expensive. Cat 8 copper cable can only go to 10GB/s. No standardization for 100GB/s cables yet. Data is transferred in “frames.” Frames are usually 1500 bytes. You can change the frame size. Most common protocol is IP. Other exist such as ATA of Ethernet (AoE). RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) offers lower latency. Useful for high performance applications. Is cheap since it is an open standard.

Infiniband Is a proprietary technology generally in very high performance servers. Its biggest advantage is low latency compared to Ethernet. Most of the support comes from Intel and Mellanox. Has two types of cables: short range copper cables and long range optical cables. Current speeds top out at about 40GB/s. 100GB/s has been announced. Might already be available. Expensive compared to Ethernet.

Fiber Channel Due to lack of backing, is being out-muscled by Ethernet and Infiniband. Still relevant due to legacy SAN installations. Computers connected by dual fiber cables. Offers speeds of 8GB/s, 16GB/s 32GB/s & 128GB/s have been announced. I don’t think they are available yet. Uses Fiber Channel Protocol (FCP). Offers low latency for high performance uses.

WiFi WiFi (aka 802.11) is the most common home and small business network technology today. It suffers from a lot of collision problems (half duplex). Almost all wireless and microwave devices interfere with WiFi. Has very high latency (about 10x) compared to wired technologies. Speed is limited by inverse square law. Intensity/radius^2 In general, they have optimal range of between 100-300 feet. Question: If you are standing three times as far as the recommended distance from the WiFi source, what is your optimal WiFi speed?

Hubs and Switches Allow computers to interconnect. They are fast. Hub Wiring is shared between all connections. Collisions are problematic (aka half duplex). Have been mostly phased out. Some home routers with LAN ports are hubs. Cheap to make. Switch Each port is wired separately. No collisions thus offering optimal speed (aka full duplex). Managed Switch. Like a normal switch but you can program each port to check for specific computers. They allow you to separate computers on different networks by VLAN. Note a managed switch does NOT allow VLAN’s to share resources.

Router At its core, a Router separates networks. Because they do more processing, they are generally slower than switches. Routers can have multiple ports, and each port is usually configured to be a different network. A router can be programmed to allow different networks to share specific resources. For instance, network #1 can share port 80 with network #2. This is called routing.