S-38.001 Telecommunications Forum –99

Laboratory of Telecommunications Technology

Prof. Raimo Kantola

Possible Questions

1. What were the major milestones that shaped the birth of the Internet until 1986?
2. What is the approximate business value of an Internet customer? Justify.
3. Why has the bottom-up approach been succesfull in Internet technology development?
4. What were the business reasons that lead to the birth of the ISPs late 1980’s and early 90’s?
5. How can the ISPs keep up their growth while competition pushes down the prices? What is the likely outcome of saturation of the market?
6. Explain TCP principles.
7. Explain IP addressing based on CIDR.
8. Describe the structure and main functions of home user access part of the Internet. What is a reasonable level of traffic aggregation in the Access?
9. Describe the cost structure of an ISP. What are the cost factors and what are their typical relationships?
10. What are the most important network design criteria for an ISP?
11. List different types of ISPs. Give the key qualifying criteria for each type.
12. Explain differences between a repeater, a bridge and a router.
13. Give a classification of routers. Give qualifying criteria and explain differences between types.
14. How should an ISP select its routing equipment? What are most important selection criteria?
15. Calculate packet propagation delay in vacuum over a 6000km satellite link.
16. What is FR good for?
17. Explain major security concerns, approach and priorities of an ISP.
18. What should be covered in the security policy of an ISP?
19. How should an ISP respond to a security breach?
20. Charactirize Internet markets. How can an ISP add value to its service?
21. What are current business opportunities for an ISP to extend its service?
22. Compare fax and e-mail as services for business transactions. Can e-mail make fax obsolete?
23. Describe fax/e-mail interoperation service scenarios.
24. Analyse the business potential of Voice over Internet.
25. Explain how an e-mail service works.
26. Describe the possible ISP e-mail service propositions to a network customer.
27. Explain the organisation of e-mail service to dial customers by an ISP.
28. Describe ISP services to customers as a domain name retailer.
29. Explain modes of web caching. What are the consequences and business issues. Explain inherent controversies.
30. Analyse the business case for Web Caching in Finland with parameters: cost of International carriage is $100/Gbyte, ISP International traffic is 2000 Gbytes/month, Cache up-front cost is
    $50 000 and maintenance $8000/month. Make reasonable assumptions where necessary.
31. Describe web caching deployment models and challenges.
32. Describe Web Hosting service models and issues related to those models.
33. Describe types of USENET services provided by an ISP. Discuss possible future development of the service.
34. Define VPN. Describe models of VPNs relevant in the Internet context.
35. Explain the virtual router concept.
36. Characterise the current ISP business climate as a starting point for business planning. What are the major challenges in ISP business planning.
37. Describe potential alternative business objectives for an ISP. What are the risks inherent in the alternatives?
38. Analyse suitability of cash flow based growth strategy in the Internet business environment.
39. Describe a sensible cost calculation method for a projected ISP operation.
40. Describe the cost structure of service operations. What are prevalent elements.
41. Calcualte and analyse NAS costs per SIO provided that 10 000 dial customers need to be serviced, NAS port cost is $500, maintenance is 8% of purphase price per annum. Make reasonable assumptions where necessary.
42. Describe the structure of Sales&Marketing costs and the cost of business operations.
43. Explain alternatives and business issues of ISP pricing. How should an ISP select its pricing structure?
44. What are current and potential motivations and objectives for public regulation of the Internet?