Data Communications 9th week moved from Wireless networks back to the standard variety and now focused on Backbone networks.
The two major topics were:
- Switched, Routed and Gateway Backbones
- Virtual LANs
Routed backbones operate on the 3rd network layer, allowing for cross data link protocol communications. This is not possible for the faster but simpler switch backbones. Some Gateways work on the application layer and involve more processing than routed backbones. Gateways are most often used for networks connecting to mainframes.
Additionally, for our assignment we must analyze the differences between the IEEE 802.11 wireless protocols, information for this can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11