Installation and Configuration Issues
In a Nutshell - CIW Course Section 3, Part A1, Chapter 1
Common IT Tasks
Installation, configuration, management and planning are the general tasks any IT department needs to deal with. These can be grouped as either backbone services or mission-critical services. Backbone services tend to be less visible to the end-user and form the basis of a working LAN or WAN. System installation, server configuration, directory services, naming services and address management can all be classified as backbone services.
Mission-Critical services may include troubleshooting, e-mail servers and other business essential functions. Troubleshooting, or the assessing and resolving of problems, is considered a top-level mission-critical service.
System Components
The elements that go to build a server include the motherboard, processor(s), disk(s), memory and network card(s).
The disks or hard drives can be configured in a number of ways: individual disks provide the maximum storage space but no redundancy, mirrored disks provide redundancy but slower access speeds, RAID disks provide both redundancy and good access speeds but are more expensive. Disks may also use the IDE, EIDE or SCSI bus interfaces. EIDE is the most common interface for workstation computers, where SCSI is still the normal for servers, particularly those that employ RAID solutions. EIDE operates at 16MBps and can support up to 4 drives, SCSI can operate at up to 80MBps and can support up to 15 devices.
Each computer will have a motherboard and one or more processors. Most computers use a CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) processors but some, particularly high-end workstations will use RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) processors when speed of processing is the main objective.
The motherboard will also hold the memory, which today is likely to come in the form of DIMMs (Dual Inline Memory Modules) and could be in the order of GigaBytes.
Bandwidth Options
Bandwidth is generally discussed in terms of network data transfer, but does, in fact, apply equally to bus speeds within the computer.
Technically, bandwidth is the width of a band of electromagnetic frequencies that an electronic signal occupies on a given transmission medium. This is directly proportional to the amount of data that is transmitted or received per unit time and so, bandwidth is used to refer to the speed of data flow.
There are a number of different transmission standards around the world: T-carrier, E-carrier and J-carrier which are geographical standards and all employ a permanent leased line connection. DSL can also a permanent connection but this uses a standard telephone line connection. ISDN is a dial-up connection.
| T-Carries Line Speeds | |
|---|---|
| FT1 | 64 Kbps |
| FT | 1.544 Mbps |
| T2 | 6.3 Mbps |
| T3 | 44.736 Mbps |
| T4 | 274.176 Mbps |
The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administration (CEPT) has adopted the E-carrier line speeds as it's standard.
| E-Carrier Line Speeds | |
|---|---|
| E1 | 2.048 Mbps |
| E2 | 8.448 Mbps |
| E3 | 34.368 Mbps |
| E4 | 139.264 Mbps |
| E5 | 565.148 Mbps |
The J-carrier standard is a Japanese system based on multiple 64Kbps channels
| J-Carrier Line Speeds | |
|---|---|
| J1 | 1.554 Mbps |
| J2 | 6.312 Mbps |
| J3 | 32.064 Mbps |
| J4 | 97.728 Mbps |
| J5 | 565.148 Mbps |
All of the above standards use the DS (Digital Signal) system as a base multiple. This digital signal is carried inside the carrier system.
DSL or Digital Subscriber Line can provide a continuous connection over a standard telephone line. The data signals are multiplexed with the voice signals allowing voice and data to function independently. DSL provides asynchronous data, which is to say, download speeds differ from upload speeds, with the former generally being faster. Signal degradation limits the range that this service can operate over, in most cases the subscriber must live within a few kilometres of the telephone exchange. Currently download speeds up to 8MBps are available in certain areas.
ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) is a dial-up service operating over a standard telephone line. There are two service types, BRI (Basic Rate Interface) comprises three channels and PRI (Primary Rate Interface) which comprises 24 channels. In each case one of the channels is a D or delta channel used to manage the link, it transmits data at 16Kbps. The remaining channels are B or bearer channels, carrying data at 64Kbps.
Wireless access is not really an option for the corporate network, but a home computer or laptop may be wireless ready. There are wireless access points throughout the country allowing access to the Internet. It is also possible to dial-up from a mobile phone and if this is blue-tooth enabled it can serve as a modem to your laptop. Many PDAs have built-in mobile phones and are used effectively for just this purpose.