Target audience:

This PTT online course is aimed at those responsible for the installation and maintenance of local and wide area networks.

 

Course prerequisites:

An understanding of the operation of, and protocols employed by, Ethernet local area networks. It is recommended that the PTT course EBC: "Ethernet networks" is studied before attempting this course.

 

Course objectives:
By the end of this course you will be able to:

• describe the role of testing in installing, commissioning and fault-finding a network.
• define the various key performance indicators that together express the performance of a communications network.
• describe the role of a service level agreement with reference to quality of service indicators.
• describe the causes of frame loss, delay and jitter and their effects on multimedia services such as video streaming, telephony and video conferencing.
• describe the various factors that influence the achievable data transfer rate over a network.
• explain the effect of the TCP protocol on throughput with reference to the TCP window size.
• describe the benefits of a structured approach to fault-finding and the roles of information gathering, analysis, and testing hypotheses.
• explain that testing at the different protocol layers in a certain sequence can assist in isolating a fault, giving examples of such an approach.
• describe the role of various software utilities in taking a structured approach to fault-finding, giving examples of their use.
• describe the use of protocol analysers to monitor and analyse network traffic.
• describe and compare the role of the various standards applicable to the measurement of network performance.
• describe the use of specialised test equipment to assess the performance of, and find faults in, a network.

 

Number of modules: 4 
Approximate study time: 5 hours 

Download and view the course specification in Adobe PDF format

 

Delivery platform requirements:
Computer study:
To access the course, a computer running a browser such as Google Chrome, Safari etc is required. The computer should have Internet access and be running Adobe Flash. A screen resolution of at least 1024x768 is necessary.

Tablet study:
This course is designed for study on a tablet through the learntelecoms App which is available for Apple® iPad® and for Android™.
Minimum requirements:
learntelecoms App for Android: 7in tablet or larger with ARMv7 processor running Android 2.3 or higher.
learntelecoms App for iPad running iOS 6.1 or higher.