Management

Computer Networks: An Open Source Approach

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Computer networking or data communications is a set of disciplines concerned with communication between computer systems or devices. It has its requirements and underlying principles. Since the first node of ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency Network, later renamed Internet) was established in 1969, the store-and-forward packet switching technologies formed the Internet architecture, which is a solution to meeting the requirements and underlying principles of data communications. This solution converged with the TCP/IP protocol suite in 1983 and continued to evolve thereafter.
The Internet, or the TCP/IP protocol suite, is just one possible solution that happens to be the dominant one. There are other solutions that also meet the requirements and satisfy the underlying principles of data communications. For example, X.25 and Open System Interconnection (OSI) were also developed in the 1970s but were eventually replaced by TCP/IP. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), once popular in the 1990s, has compatibility difficulties with TCP/IP and thus faded away. Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) survived because it was designed from the beginning to be complementary to TCP/IP.
Similarly, there are many implementations of the Internet solution on all sorts of computer systems or devices. Among them, the open-source implementations share the same open and bottom-up spirit as the Internet architecture, offering the public practical accessibility to the software’s source code. In the bottom-up approach, volunteers contribute their designs or implementations while seeking support and consensus from the developer community, in contrast to the top-down approach driven by the authority. Being open-source and freely available, these implementations serve as solid running examples of how various networking mechanisms work in specific details.

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Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

Computer Networks: An Open Source Approach

Call Number

-

Publisher

USA : McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2012

Collation

1-771

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

-13: 978-0-07-337624

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

1st Edtion

Subject(s)

Information Technology

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

-

Other version/related

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