La Trobe University, Bendigo
Division of Information Technology
BITCNE: Computer Networks
Assignment 3 1998 - Semester 2
This assignment sheet is (ever so) slightly
incomplete
Answer ONE ONLY of the following questions.
- There have been various electronic payment (or
electronic cash) systems designed for payment for goods and
services on the Web. Not many of these have, to my knowledge,
actually been widely implemented. You task in this question is to
discover any electronic cash systems which have been actually
implemented on commercial websites. We aren't interested in
the traditional credit-card approach, and I don't want a report on
how the different e-cash systems operate, rather I want to know
who is using these systems right now.
- Based on publically available pricing at Telstra, Optus,
connect.com.au, Access 1, etc, write a report on the economics of
becoming an ISP.
- You have been retained as a consultant by a small(ish - you
decide how big) Central Victorian business to advise them on their
options for obtaining Internet access. They initially want
straightforward email service, but wish to keep their options open
in terms of future use of the net, in particular the possibility
of establishing an "electronic storefront" for Internet commerce.
Write a report detailing their options, using (as much as
possible) real world costings for the proposed services. Note that
it is not sufficient to get prices from a single provider, and
that the economics of Internet access are far from
straightforward.
- This question is about network security. Your
task is to investigate public key cryptosystems. In particular,
you should investigate PGP (Phil Zimmerman's
Pretty Good Privacy package), available on the departmental
Unix systems. You are required to create a personal PGP
public/private key pair, and use your private key to encrypt an
email message (as below) to your lecturer. You must then provide
your public key to the lecturer in such a way that the lecturer is
absolutely certain of the origin of the encrypted (or
signed) message. Your email message should be a report which
covers what you did, why you did it, and a brief discussion of the
current status of PGP, given the recent appearance of PGP Inc.
- Use
tkined
to build a network management system
for the Bendigo campus, monitoring most of the
interesting pieces of equipmen in the campus network.
Perhaps you could use one of the other many SNMP packages
available, see below.
- As mentioned in
Tute
15, one of the hottest things around in network management at
the moment is integrating it with the WWW. You topic here is to
find out all you can about browser front ends for network
management, integration of browsers and Java with SNMP, and the
idea of running Web servers on routers and the like. I'm
particularly interested in hard, practical information on what
people are really doing with this stuff.
- The standard (free) SNMP package for Unix
is
tkined
. There are many other SNMP-based network
monitoring packages in existence, particularly for Windoze
systems, although there are a few for Macs. Discover two (or more)
such packages, install them and report on their usefulness.
- One of the hot issues in the Internet at present is that of
censorship. In the USA, there have been several legislative
attempts to censor the the 'net (eg, the Communications Decency
Act), none of which have succeeded yet. Many other countries (in
particular, Australia) are either proceeding down this path, or
have hinted at possible future legislation. Meanwhile, some
jurisdictions have simply gone ahead and implemented censorship,
using various forms of "border router" (firewall) filtering as
well as draconian licensing regulations. Your task here, then, is
to briefly document the current state of censorship on the
Internet, and discuss some technical aspects of
the problem of enforcement.
- Investigate SOCKS. This software is
frequently used as a circuit-level firewall, and is something that
you could come across in the Real World(tm). Tell me how it works,
how you configure it, and what it can do for you. Incidentally, it might
be easiest if you stick with SOCKS V.4 - the V.5 version is
somewhat more complicated.
- Investigate steganography, and in particular how it
relates to encryption and the Internet. This is a fun topic,
because you should discover lots of interesting software (eg, one
I occasionally use is called snow) and applications.
- As before, another topic with the explicit prior
approval of your lecturer. If you are interested in
something under this heading, you must email me (with [BITCNE] at
the start of the subject line, as usual) stating your proposal.
You should expect to write something between 1500 and 3000 words
on the topic of your choice, although this is not mandatory. You have
two options for submission of your assignment: traditional hard copy
(paper) form, or on-line using a web page dedicated to this
assignment. Your choice of submission format will not, in any way,
affect the mark which you obtain, although students choosing
electronic submission should consult the
guidelines available on the BITCNE home
page before proceeding to submit via this method. Submissions
must, in general, adhere to the requirements of the LaTrobe
University, Bendigo Assignment Guide.
This assignment carries 20% of your mark for Computer Networks.
Due Date: End of semester 2, 1998.
Lecturer and tutor:
Phil
Scott 5444 7277,
p.scott@latrobe.edu.au
Phil
Scott