Network Technology, Structure and Protocols

¶ … Network Technology, Structure and Protocols

Of the many tutorials available, the two chosen where on Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) and the fundamentals of ATM Portals and technologies. Both provided useful insights into how these technologies work, what their contributions are to the continual evolution of the Internet, and most importantly, how these technologies are making businesses more productive. The tutorials also kept the sales pitch aspects to a minimum, which made them much more effective from a learning standpoint. Of the two, the IPv6 tutorial was far more descriptive of how these technologies can streamline networking bandwidth and cut costs of operating a glob al enterprise-wide network. The configuration options available in IPv6 also were exceptional in terms of showing the address length variations in addition to static and dynamic routing functionality. Finally the comparison of header structure and overhead between IPv4 and IPv6 were significant and further underscored how essential this technology is for managing a global enterprise. The second tutorial on ATM Portals and their related technologies illustrated why the collection of these integration and connectivity protocols and systems are invaluable for any enterprise operating globally. The potential exists using ATM Portals and their associated technologies to create a unified, secured platform for collaboration and transaction management across vast distances. All of this can be accomplished for little if any incremental cost, just the knowledge of the ATM protocol and its related elements is needed. Having expertise in asynchronous time-division multiplexing techniques appears to be invaluable as a marketable skill in networking and very powerful in setting up a state-of-the-art ATM network.

Assessing The Business Needs Being Met

The business value of the IPv6 protocol becomes immediately apparent after studying over the tutorials. First, the shortening of address lengths, greater control over address space, and enhanced support for mobility all underscore how valuable this technology is both reducing costs of networking and also extending their reach across platforms (mobile, desktop, laptop and mainframe systems). In addition, The potential for IPv6 to significantly reduce the overall costs of supporting an enterprise-wide network are also very clear as well.

ATM portals and technologies are ideal for creating a unified computing and networking platform corporate-wide, especially if a company has operations in several countries, and across continents. The speed and bandwidth considerations of running a global enterprise are also accentuated by this technology, as is a drastic reduction in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for a given network topology that must scale to be global. In addition, ATM could be used for unifying diverse legacy systems into a single, cohesive network architecture that capitalizes on the many information assets a company has (Dunne, Klementowski, 1982). In addition, these networks also make it possible to create entirely new approaches to solving very complex problems in enterprise, including the ability to collaborate and produce new product designs in real-time across an entire enterprise (Soon-Young, Chung, Hyung-Min, 2000).