Spanning Tree Protocol - Loop-free topology

Hieu Nguyen 0522-450 July 5, 2012

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Spanning Tree Protocol

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Introduction

On my second years at Adirondack Community College of 2007, I was exposed myself to Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) theory. I came to Rochester Institute of Technology in 2009 to further in depth of the computer-networking world. I often heard one of my RIT classmates and RIT Professors brought up a STP topic that was invented by Radia Joy Perlman. They said that she wrote a Spanning Tree Protocol poem; not only that, her son (Ray Perlner) wrote a musical song version from the poem. The STP song was sung by her daughter (Dawn Perlner) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Which was sounds interesting to me, because Perlman summarized the Spanning Tree algorithm into a poem. Some students often overlook STP, and therefore this paper looks into the analysis of the invention and the inventors. How STP is important in economic world. Spanning Tree Protocol history Radia Joy Perlman born 1952; she is a software engineer and network engineer. She earned a B.S. Degree in 1973 and a M.S in 1976, both in mathematics. Upon graduation, she worked for BBN, the government contractor, to develop software for networking. 1 2. 1970 a group of computer scientist came together to assemble the networking equipment, which we known now is Internet. STP invention came in 1980, when Perlman got hired by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), a computer industry. DEC was merged with Hewett Package, now it is HP (Salim), had multiple nodes that has the routing problem; Perlman quickly design a solution to fix the problem. Which is called Spanning Tree Protocol. A spanning tree algorithm does exactly the way DEC wanted to solve the routing loop problem (Inventor of the week)

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What it does Routing loop is a major problem that can slow down or congest the network, because the traffic never gets to the intent destination. It happens when a network device that has multiple paths toward the destination. What if one of the paths dies? How can a switch knows and quickly makes a decision to forward the data to the alternative path? This is where the STP comes into play. STP is a link layer network protocol that ensures a loop-free topology for any bridged local area network (LAN)that is fundamental to the operation of network bridges [switches]. (Salim) 2. Spanning Tree algorithm is considered a solution to solve the networking problem and it is still being used today. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), The IEEE is best known for developing standards for the computer and electronics industry. In particular, the IEEE 802 standards for local-area networks are widely followed, (Webpedia)3 adopted her algorithm, which is called 802.1D, as a 1/28/2013
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standard for bridging and switching technology in 1998 (Oppenheimer ).4 3.1 3.2 Advantage(s) STP Creates loop-free topology, and ensures there is no routing loop in the network Disadvantage(s) Without STP, the data will be loop in the network, thus causes the network to crash, therefore STP is needed on the network

4. Analysis of the invention and inventor These are the analysis of the invention and the inventor. How she went through various individual and social conditions: 1952: She was born in Portsmouth, Virginia 1973 - 1980: She earned her bachelors math degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Despite she hated computers and still does, and took a part time job at the Logo Lab and taught programming to kids. After she earned her bachelor degree, and went straight to graduate school. She could not find any advisers to get her started on thesis; her friend advised her to leave the graduate school and work for BBN in designing and implementing protocols for packet radio. (Salim) 1975: DEC created a suite of network protocols to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers and evolving into one of the first peer-to-peer network architectures, which transforming DEC into a networking powerhouse in the 1980s, Perlman says. 1976: She earned her masters degree in mathematics. 1980: While working for BBN, she presented a paper on how to solve computernetworking problem at the inventor meeting. No one seems to bother to ask her any questions. One of the DEC people got impressed and came up to her and said, Wow! Weve been thinking about that problem and your solution is completely clear. You were just completely ignored. Didnt that bother you?, Oh, Im used to it. Everyone ignores me, Perlman replied. Needless to say, DEC promised her that she would not be ignored if she joins the network architecture group. So she joined the group 1988: Earned Her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1988 1993: She left DEC and worked for Novell 1997: She joined Sun Microsystem (now it is Oracle). She holds more than 50 patents while working for Oracle (Salim) 5 1/28/2013
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2005: She was awarded the Women of Vision Award for Innovation in 2005 by the Anita Borg Institute For Women and Technology 6 2007: She earned 80 patents (Inventor of the Week) 2010 - Present: She joined Intel Corporation as an Intel Fellow, her responsibility is to ensuring Intel Labs leadership in network and security 7 According to the interview in the, Meet the Mother of the Internet article, Perlman enjoyed English and creative writing in school. Perlman described herself as a shy, quiet in school. She was the best science and math, because she likes getting good grade by remembering and knowing the facts. She was first fall in love with programming, because it was intimidating to her -- her programming class consists of all men. She took part time at MIT media lab to teach programming to kids while in the undergraduate program -- despite she hates the computer (Salim). She later wrote a paper on solving computer routing problem. At that time she had no mentors (faculties advises) to help her. She join a group called BBN, "a high -technology company which prices research and development service in Cambridge, Massachusetts " Later she got hired by DEC because she presented the routing problem solution just want DEC was needed at the inventor meeting. Perlman faced a lot of obstacle in her professional life. For instance, There are people that, when they give a talk, people come away thinking, Wow that guy is such a genius. I didnt understand anything he said, but thats because hes such a genius. When I give a talk, on the same topic even, people come away thinking, That stuff is really straight- forward and simple, and they dont appreciate the depth of understanding it takes to get at the conceptual heart and make the topic straightforward and simple. It seems to me that majority of males seem to not appreciate her thoughts, because she was a female engineer. What made her stand out was IEEE adopted her works. Not to mention, she obtained her Ph.D. Computer Science at MIT. 5. Analysis the impact of the invention and inventor to the world and economy She made a lot of contributions in the networking world through out her career, such as network (routing) security, redesign of IPsecs IKE protocol, PKI models, efficient certification revocation, and distributed authorization (Salim). Further deep analysis why all of her contributions are important in the computernetworking world today. Here are reasons why: Network security. A computer network without a security is vulnerable to have personal data breach on the Internet. These are the steps to mitigate the problems: identifying the assets that must be protected, the value of the assets, and the expected cost associated with losing these assets if a 1/28/2013
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security breach occurs (Oppenheimer). A company may lose reputation, because people do not want to do business with them IPsecs IKE protocol. The Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol provides authentication of IPSec peers. It also negotiates IPSec keys and security associations. (Oppenheimer). Basically the key exchanges between the server and the client before both machine can talk to each other. IPsec are heavily used in Virtual Private Network (VPN). VPN allows the client to connect to the computer network from home as if he/she was working in the office. Once the client VPN into the network, a client can access all the computer network resources in the company. I use VPN a lot when I am at Starbucks, because it helps me to secure my wireless traffics. It prevents hackers to intercept my wireless traffics -- a hacker can not decrypt the captured data Efficient certification revocation and distributed authorization are related to the online transaction between server and client. The the public key infrastructure (PKI), digital certificates, signed by certification authorities (CAs), are the means of distributing public keys accurately and reliably to users needing to encrypt messages or verify digital signatures.8 In other words, when a client makes a transaction online with Amazon.com (online store), the certificate that provided by the third party to Amazon to(e.g. VeriSign) ensures the transaction will not be intercepted in between Amazon and the client

Some reporters and even the Mother of the Internet, article called her as a mother of the Internet, because of her prolific inventions. One of her famous works was STP. STP is used almost everywhere, even your home router device. STP is transparent in our lives that sometime were taking it for granted. In addition, STP is the heart of every router, switch, and bridge, that we are used (Telle Whitney, Present and CEO of Anita Borge Institute for Women and Technology). Perlman made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardization such as link-state protocols. (Salim) Link-state routing protocol is a finite state machine; it makes decision based on the event. 9. For instance, if a path toward a neighbor device is down, it selects an alternative backup path in its database to forward the traffic. Theoretically, without link state routing protocols, it will be a time consuming for us to manually troubleshoot the network and ensure the data forward to the right destination network. 6. Summary

Spanning tree algorithm is implemented on every networking devices, it allows computers and networking devices to talk to each other, which is known as Internet. Today, the Internet is important in our live, we are depending Internet to get our work done. Not to mention, a company could lose some potential customers or million of dollars if there is no Internet for a few minutes. For instance, missing a split-second trading decision the stock trading company can lose a million of dollars. 10 Amazon.com needs Internet to generate incomes; 1/28/2013
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Amazon.com may not exist without the Internet. This paper has covered the important of the invention and the inventor that impact our society and economy. Perlman encourages all women to read conference papers and books, and be supportive of those around them. (Salim) even if it is not related to their fields, and supports people around them.

References:

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Spanning Tree Algorithm. (Aug. 2007). Inventor of the Week. 17 Jun. 2012 http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/perlman.html

Salim, Nacy. Meet the "Mother of the Internet" [Women to Watch]. (2010). Women in Engineering Magazine, IEEE. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.ezproxy.rit.edu/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=5605062
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Webopidea. 4 Jul. 2012. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/I/IEEE.html Oppenheimer, Priscilla. Top-Down Network Design, Second Edition. (2004). Books24x7. 4 Jul. 2012. http://library.books24x7.com.ezproxy.rit.edu/toc.aspx?bkid=35337

Meet the "Mother of the Internet" [Women to Watch]. 4 Jul. 2012. http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org.ezproxy.rit.edu %2F10.1109%2FMWIE.2010.938214&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGwuFeDpFRhNGkukQd hLwelo4IIhg
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Woman of Vision Radia Perlman Video. 4 Jul. 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=imD5TSdG_Yc Perlman, Radia | IEEE Solutionists. (2007). 4 Jul. 2012. http://solutionists.ieee.org/radiaperlman/ Vacca, John. Chapter 25 - Certificate Revocation with VeriSign Managed PKIFlexible, Open Revocation Solutions for Today's Enterprise PKI Needs. Public Key Infrastructure: Building Trusted Applications and Web Services: Auerbach Publications (2004). Rochester Institute of Technology Lib., Rochester, NY. 30 Jun. 2012. http://library.books24x7.com.ezproxy.rit.edu/assetviewer.aspx? bookid=7373&chunkid=453226045 The Free Dectionary. 4 Jul. 2012. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Finite+state+machine Stock Trading Is About to Get 5.2 Milliseconds Faster. 4 Jul. 2012. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-29/trading-at-the-speed-of-light

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