Day 17

My IP address at the moment is:

152.33.70.2

I decided to look up the domain of the bank my Dad runs:
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/xenithbankinorg.com

Day 16

1. What was the word you were sent, and what is its definition?
I was sent "ensorcel". The word ensorcel means to bewitch (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ensorcel).

2.What was the word you were trying to send, and what is its definition?
I was trying to send the word "willywaw" or spelled "williwaw", is a violent arctic wind that howls down steep sided mountains and slams onto the ocean. It can also be a whirlwind encountered in the Straits of Magellan (http://www.willywaw.com/whatis.html).

3.How long does it take you to send your message using this method?
It took our class a collective of 55 mins to send 27 messages.

4.Was it easier to send or receive a message using this method?
I thought it was easier to send the message. I thought this because although it was difficult to get a space to send one, when you had that space you could call out the number. With receiving you had to make sure you were listening and then be sure that you were able to hear the correct number. A couple of times I got my 1s and 0s confused and when that happened I got the wrong letter.

5. What were some of the bottlenecks?
Some of the bottlenecks that occurred during class where that people started to talk at the same time. When this happened we called collision and you had to wait a random amount of time until you called your person again. Another bottleneck people encountered was that they couldn't get all the numbers written down--it is confusing to listen to only 1s and 0s because they start to run together! The final bottleneck we discussed were the random intervals. Some people would wait a long time after a collision to resend their message, while others would try again right after the collision was called.

6. How could you speed up this process or make it more efficient?
We tried a couple of different tactics to speed up the process--going in a circle, starting with one person and then having that person who received the message send their own message and so on. We found though neither of these were successful because there were long lulls or people were skipped all together. At the end we went back to the original way we sent messages--just randomly calling out names and hoping no one was trying to send one at the same time. In the end it this was the most efficient because by the end of the session only a couple of people were talking at once. Although it was all confusing, it was a fun exercise and a cool way to relate networks.

Day 15

What are some ways that we can design a network to handle (smoothly)
a) addressing and b) communication conflicts in a bus topology?

To address the communication problem I would give each computer an increment of time that they could send out a message. For example A could send information out every 5 seconds. B could send out on increments of 10 seconds and so on. There would have to be an exact starting time though so computers wouldn't get confused or be sending out information all at once. Another problem would be if there were a lot of computers on one bus system, then time increments would get longer. I suppose if this were the only solution to the communication problem, there would have to be a limit to how many computers were on a bus system.

I'm not sure how one would address the address issue with network design. Perhaps each computer could have a signal that they give off at all times so other computers could locate them. It would be kind of like a lighthouse--blinking so you could find it. Again, if there were a lot of computers on one system, the signals would have to be all different so there would have to be a limit of computers on each bus system again.