Mastering Global Information System

Data communications is an area which grows each year as demand and computing power increases. More and more information is becoming digitized at its source and then either stored or transmitted in a digital form. Unfortunately, there are many different types of data transmission techniques and networks types, but luckily, for users, there are now international standard which most hardware and software manufacturers abide by. These standards include:

Author: Dr W.Buchanan, Napier University, Edinburgh. Downloads: None yet		Ethernet; Token ring; FDDI;
		Modems; RS-232; ATM;
		ISDN; Video conferencing; TCP/IP;
		Compression techniques (JPEG, MPEG, ZIP, and so on).

The objective of this book is to give an insight on the workings of these sys- tems. It splits into three main parts:

Digital information, conversion, storage and compression (chapters 1-5);

Local area and wide area networks (chapters 6-11);

Connections to networks (chapters 12-15).

Typical local area network technologies, such as Ethernet, IBM token ring and FDDI are discussed in depth using the ISO 7-layered model.

One of the great increases in digital information transmission will be in the transmission of real-time data, either in images or sound. This type of data requires a different type of network. These are likely to use new technologies such as Fast Ethernet, ATM and ISDN.

The appendices are used to provide a basic source of reference material. Further information on related subjects, such as emerging technologies and the diagrams from the text will soon be avialable.