Exercise 3: From DNS and DHCP to Clouds and Grids

1. Explain DNS and DHCP. How does DNS differ from DHCP configuration?

Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participants. It distributes the responsibility of assigning domain names and mapping those names to IP addresses by designating authoritative name servers for each domain.

While Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a computer networking protocol used by hosts to retrieve IP address assignments and other configuration information. The DHCP server receives the request and responds with configuration information from its configuration database.

2. Why is it important for your online business application to use a static IP address rather than have it dynamically assigned?

Online application requires to register domain names to map to specific IP address for users to easily access the website hosted on specific web server with static IP address. This is why it would be relatively inconvenient to have dynamic IP address which changes every time the web server connects to the ISP. Therefore web applications with specific domain name are usually using static IP address instead of dynamic IP address.

3. What role can the following play in business-to-business e-commerce?

a) Virtual Private Network (VPN) or Grid computing services
A virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network where the data travelling over the VPN is not generally visible to public, or is encapsulated from, the underlying network traffic. That means the sensitive data like the clearing files between the bank the clearing house is encrypted and transferred via the VPN so the content is secured.
While Grid computing is the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains for a common goal. One of the main strategies of Grid computing is to use middleware to divide and apportion pieces of program among several computers or aggregation of large-scale cluster computing based systems. This would be required if the system availability is vital to business and would cause financial lose if the system failed.

b) Next generation of wireless mesh networks
A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communication network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. Wireless mesh networks consists of mesh clients, mesh routers and gateways. The mesh clients are often laptops, cell phones and other wireless devices. A WMN can be seen as a special type of wireless ad-hoc network which is highly mobile. Users could easily connect to the business network from any mobile devices at anywhere and anytime as long as the mobile network is covered.

c) Cloud or Social Cloud applications
Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility. While cloud application services deliver software as a service over the Internet, eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computers and simplifying maintenance and support. These allow easy access from users no matter of client platforms which minimize any pre-requisite and compatibility problems.

4. “If clouding computing is the “black box”, then the grid computing is a component as the “white box”.

Explain what you interpret about that statement

Clouding computing is a server based application that could be run on any platform. Users just require to feed in the required data to the web application, just like if we are buying online tickets from cinema by entering the seat number, number of tickets and Visa card number then we got the ticket. We would not know the architecture and logic behind and so it is just like a “black box”.

Grid computing involves a large aggregation of servers forming a cluster to perform the same function. Such as a clustered file server, print server, application servers or web servers. It provides high availability and load-balancing for critical and busy applications to handle users’ request with high availability or better performance. The architecture is simple and clear as a “white box”.


Reference
Wikipedia (2010). Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol . Retrieved March 29, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhcp

Wikipedia (2010). Grid Computing . Retrieved March 29, 2010 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing

Wikipedia (2010). Wireless mesh network . Retrieved March 29, 2010 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh

Wikipedia (2010). Cloud computing . Retrieved March 29, 2010 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_application#Application