Understanding

Networks
IT4GIS
Keith T. Weber, GISP
GIS Director
ISU-GIS Training and Research Center
Once Data is Created (saved)
• Someone will want a copy
(sharing)
– BTW, this entire refrigerator-sized
memory bank stored 4KB of data
– That’s 0.000004 GB
 Why is Networking
Important?
• GIS has always been
cursed with the need to
use large files
• GIS’ers have always
acted as a community
• Sharing is normal
 How to Facilitate Sharing…
• Floppy disks
• Bernoulli disks
• Zip disks
• Jazz disks
 In the beginning…

• There were floppy

• Developed by
Xerox
• Uses Star-topology
• And twisted pair
cabling
Cabling
• Twisted pair
cabling can be
either unshielded
(UTP) or,
• Shielded
• IT4GIS will focus
on UTP
 Capabilities
• Ethernet is described by its data rate and range
• For instance:
– 10Base-2
• 10 (data rate, 10Mb/s)
• Base (base band)
• 2 (range, 200 meter runs)
– 10GBase-T
 Ethernet and GIS
• Data rates are 10,
100, 1000, and
10000
– 10 = 10 Mb/s: Cat 3
cabling
– 100 = 100 Mb/s, called
Fast Ethernet: Uses Cat
5
– 1000 = 1 Gb/s: Uses
Cat 5E
– 10000 = 10 Gb/s:
Uses Cat 6 and Cat
 Gigabit Ethernet
• Data rates of 1, 10, 40, or 100 Gbps
• 1 Gbps is supported by Cat5E cabling
– A good GIS workstation option
– Gigabit to the desktop
• 10 Gbps supported by Cat 6a cabling
• Cat7 runs at 10 Gbps (shielded only
(STP))
• Cat8 is capable of 40 Gbps (STP)
• 100 Gbps requires fiber optic cabling
Comparing Ethernet
 Quantifying Data Rate
• Think of Data Rate (Gbps or Mbps) as describing the
highway speed limit
• To measure the actual speed messages are travelling
is best described by PING (measured in milliseconds
(ms))
• Think of Ping as describing your car’s speed on the
highway
• Download and Upload (data rate) may be very
different
 Understanding Data Rate
• Your data (packet) will travel only as fast as the
slowest component between the source and
destination!
Bugatti’s top
speed is 267.7
mph

Wooden
carriage wheels top
speed 15 mph
 Do Some Math!
• 1 gigabit / second = 125 megabytes / second
– 100 GB file = 100,000 MB
– 800 seconds (100,000 / 125)~ 13 minutes
• This is under ideal conditions
– No other traffic on your network
– You are allowed to saturate the network
– One file with a single open and close operation
– 100, 1 GB files will transfer much slower due to I/O
traffic (open and close for each file)
Orders of Magnitude

Factor of 1000
 Ethernet and GIS
• Ranges are 2, 5, T
– 2 = ~ 200 m
– 5 = ~ 500 m
– T = well… (for Cat 6/6a, T is about 100 m)
• It stands for twisted pair. Cable testing tools will determine
how long a run can be and still pass “characteristics” test
(based on standards)
• Runs as long as 150 m can be used (Cat 5e).
 What’s Next…

• Wi-Fi (wireless-fidelity)
• Developed by Cisco,
3Com, Lucent, Nokia,
and others
• Specs are described
under the IEEE 802.11
group.
 A Look at 802.11

https://www.signalboosters.com/blog/ieee-802.11-standards-explained-802.11abgnacax/

• Achievable throughput
• How do these compare for GIS???
Advantages/Limitations of Wi-Fi for
GIS
Brain-storm
• Advantages • Disadvantages
– No cabling – Security
– Fairly inexpensive – Traffic can congest at the
2.4 Ghz frequency
– Size of transmission (shared
bandwidth)
 What About Cellular?
• Wi-fi is NOT the same as Cellular
– 4G LTE
– 5G

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/03/business/what-is-5g/index.html
 Getting Data from Here to
• Recap… There
– We know something about the history of
networks
– We know about current Ethernet, Fast Ethernet,
and Gigabit Ethernet technologies
– We know about Wi-Fi capabilities
• These are the Data Link and Physical
Layers, referred to as the Network Access
Layer.
• But, how does the GIS data get from here
to there on the network?…regardless of the
type of network
 Good Question!
• Packets and Protocols
– TCP-IP is most common 4. Application
protocol
– Transmission Control 3. Transport
Protocol- Internet
Protocol 2. InterNetworking

1. 1. Network
Network Access
Access
 InterNetworking Layer
• Internet Protocol addressing
– Currently IP v4 is common. This is a 32bit system
allowing 4.2B addresses.
• Example: 134.50.74.10
– IP v 6 is newer, 128-bit addressing. Allowing 2128
addresses.
• Example: 00-B0-D0-86-BB-F7
 Transport Layer

• TCP
– Transmission Control
Protocol
– Phases of operation
• Establish connection
• Transfer data
• Terminate connection
Application Layer
• You know these
well…
– HTTP
– SMTP
– FTP
 Where’s the Network
• Recap
– We have now learned how the data moves in packets
from our computer through the layers of the TCP-IP
model onto the Internet
• But, where’s The Internet
 The Internet Highway
• From your workstation
• To the LAN
• To the Backbone at the Point of Presence
– AKA…ISP
– AKA…PoP
 Various Backbones
• Redundancy
through
– ARPANet
– NSFNet
– Abilene (I2)
– National
LambdaRail
• What is IRON?
Undersea Fiber Optics
 Internet Bandwidth (Data
Rates)

https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-country.php
 We could go on forever…
• For IT4GIS, we have gone far enough…
• But today’s discussion of networks would not be
complete without mention of the second-
generation Internet, Web2.0
 Web2.0
• Is not :
– Internet2
– Is not hardware
– Is not software
• It is…a whole new way that the Internet is
used.
– Participatory
– Users are now “prosumers” instead of “consumers”
 Participatory Web
• Examples:
– Wikipedia
– Others?
• What will this mean for GIS?
 Web 3.0
• We will cover this in greater detail later in the
semester
• For now, what was it and what is it today?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/01/06/what-is-web-3-0/?sh=68a370
0e58df
 The Web and AI
• Is it the same thing?
– Not really, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence
(especially AI browsers) reflects a change in how we
analyze data
– AI browser is not about the delivery of data via the web
– It is all about the value of data collection
GIS and the Web
 Key Concepts
• Understand how data moves over a network
• Understand the importance of data rate for GIS
applications.
• Watch the potential of wireless for GIS
• Understand the roles of the various layers within the
TCP-IP model
• Understand new terminology like PoP and GigaPoP
• The network is typically the bottleneck for GIS
• Contemplate the affect of Web2.0
 Questions…

Get ready for the 2-minute write