La Trobe University, Bendigo
Department of Information Technology
INT21CN: Computer Networks
Assignment 3, 2003
Your task in this assignment is to investigate ONE
ONLY of the following topics in computer network architecture,
and submit a report/essay on your findings. Most of the questions are
fairly "open-ended", so it'll be easy to do too much! Keep reminding
yourself that you only have to write a maximum of 2000 words
for the assignment. You must also remember to correctly
reference your information sources!
Note also that additional topics might appear on this page as they
are suggested to us. It could be worth checking back regularly if you
don't like any of those given below.
- One of the biggest problems faced by Internet users is that of
Spam -- unsolicited commercial/bulk email. The
spammers use a great number of techniques to hide their identity,
but much can be discovered by a few simple tricks. Firstly, it is
usually possible to examine the
Received:
headers of a spam message and discover where it was
relayed -- you can then complain to the relay
site's administrator. Secondly, if the relay site doesn't respond
you can use a tool like traceroute
to discover
his "upstream ISP" and complain to the admin of
that site. Using some real spam email which has
been sent to you, discover and document:
- whether the relay or originating host can be identified, and
whether complaining to
postmaster
or
abuse
at that site has any effect, and
- Whether its worth the trouble to inform upstream ISPs revealed
by
traceroute
in the fight against spam.
- The previous question related to "proactive" approaches to spam.
For many Internet users the simplest solution is simply to discard
spam emails. This can be automated/assisted by "intelligent" email
filters.
- Discover what you can about approaches taken to email spam
filtering. In particular, what can you learn about "Bayesian
Spam Filters"? Are such filters readily available, and how well
do they perform? Are there better approaches -- for example,
how do such filters compare with (eg) whitelist/blacklist
approaches? With other adapative filter technologies?
- Can you configure your own email software
(whatever it is that you use on a regular basis) to discard
spam, based on the filtering technologies you have discovered
in your research for this question? As for the previous
question, demonstrate its operation on real spam
email which has been sent to you
- You have been approached (as a computer networking expert) by a
local business (or community organisation, or whatever) who desire
to get their business "onto the Web", with their own domain name.
The name is to be registered in the either of the
.com.au
or .org.au
domains,
so (for example) we might use dodgybros.com.au
as the domain name. Write a report explaining the steps (and costs)
involved in registering the domain name, contacting with a Web
hosting service and getting their pages "online". You should be
sure to mention some technical aspects of how the DNS is to be
configured.
- A local Bendigo business desires a full-time Internet connection,
to enable them to run their own Web and email server. You have been
engaged as a consultant to advise them on their options, and to
suggest the best mix of technology and products to serve their
purpose. You may assume that speed, whilst always obviously
important, is not their main concern. See if you can come up with
some "real-world numbers" for pricing, without doing an
excessive amount of work. This question is absolutely
not about hardware and software beyond that needed for the
actual connection to the ISP, such as access routers, etc. You are
not to write about how to set up servers, what sort of
computers would be required, what software they should run, etc.
Your assignment is to present options for the "Basic Carriage
Service" and the ISP costs, for a business which will, presumably,
be running a Web server and an email gateway on a full-time
connection. That's it. You must use Real World™ numbers, and
there must be some comparative component. And yes, it will be
difficult to find this information. NB: you also do not
have to address issues of domain name registration,
delegation, etc -- see previous question if these topics interest
you.
- Investigate the use of PGP (and/or GnuPG) as a practical
encryption tool, suitable for everyday use in the modern email
environment. Download a recent package and install as a plug-in in
your normal/usual email software. Document the effort required to
create a key pair, distribute your public key, and exchange
encyrpted and/or signed emails with others. It's obvious that
you'll have to work with someone else to manage this. Shared
assignments are possible here, but I'd prefer if you each used (at
the least) a different email package, and submitted separate
assignment reports. If you're intending to submit your assignment
by email, I would like it signed with your private key and a copy
of your public key handed to me as well so I can verify its source.
You might care to comment on the usefulness of these technologies
in typical Web-based email systems.
- Use
tkined
to build a network management system
for the Bendigo campus, monitoring most of the interesting pieces
of equipment in the campus network. You should submit the single
".tki
" file for your monitoring system, along
with a brief description of what it does, and how it does it, so
that we can run it and check its operation. Obviously this question
is only relevant to people who are taking the subject on campus,
although if you're located somewhere with an interesting network
perhaps you could set up tkined
and use it
there. Or perhaps you could use one of the many other SNMP packages
available, see below.
- The best (free) SNMP package for Unix is widely
believed to be
tkined
. There are many other
SNMP-based network monitoring packages in existence, particularly
for Windows systems, although there are a few for Macs as well.
Discover one (or more) such packages (such as Nagios), install them on your
home system(s) and report on their usefulness.
- One of the more "interesting" developments in recent times has been
the ENUM technology for integrating aspects of
Internet addressing with the existing telephone numbering system.
This is an immensely complex system, with serious privacy
implications. Your task: in the limited number of words allowed for
in this essay, briefly describe the ENUM proposal, and outline the
privacy concerns which are related to its implementation.
You can submit your assignment in either traditional hard copy (paper)
form, or as an email attachment of MIME type
text/html
sent to
cnsubmit@ironbark.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au
. Your choice of
submission format will not affect the mark gained for your assignment.
Submissions must, as usual, adhere to the requirements of the La Trobe
University, Bendigo Assignment Guide.
This assignment carries 20% of your mark for Computer Networks.
Due Date:6th June, 2003 (end of semester 1)
Lecturer: Phil Scott, 5444 7277,
p.scott@latrobe.edu.au.
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Copyright © 2003 by
Phil Scott,
La Trobe University.