[Year 12 SofDev] Exam Question C9

[Kevork Krozian]

Hi Kevin and Mark,

  Prefacing everything with the usual IMHO.

 Firstly thanks for your comprehensive answers. They were excellent.
And Mark, your awesome presentation of the solution and discussion at  http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au/vceit/postmortems/2008sd/SD2008exam.htm#a
I concur with most of the answers by both Kevin and Mark except :

1. Section A Q 17 . Terrible question. 
   The only workable answer given the topology, is to have a dedicated firewall on segment 3. Segment 4 is outside the control of the organisation. The ISP controls Segment 4 and allocated an IP address to the modem interface to allow it to speak with the ISP. If a firewall is placed in segment 4 the network will not function as the modem will not be able to speak to the ISP. 
  Kevin , you make a good point about not having your router exposed to attacks by having the firewall at segment 3. That is why this is a bad question. Because ideally the firewall should be between the router and the modem. However, corporate solutions place the dedicated firewall if that is what we MUST use ( separate box ) at segment 3 because the router is just that, doing routing ( path selection and steering of packets to the right interface or perhaps some Network address translation where internal private addresses can be translated to live addresses and/or even acting as a DHCP server) and not much more. 

 The firewall would be best placed as a part of the router on the router/modem. 

2. Section A Q19 - Mark you ask about the difference between serial and sequential access. Serial has no order and sequential has some type of order eg. by customer number. So you can tell if you a record is in the file by reading past the expected position of a record in a sequential file, but with a serial file you need to read the whole file to establish that a record is not there.

3. Section C - Mark you have a pet peeve regarding assignment statements in pseudocode ) that are reverse arrows <-  and difficult to type ( less than and a dash ) . 
To quote you " What's so difficult with using = or even == (two equal signs) to indicate assignment of values? They're commonly used in most languages! "  . 
How would you separate a test of equality from assignment ? 
In most C based languages this distinction is made via the single or double = . The compiler picks up the wrong form before runtime whereas some other languages like PHP simply assign the value in an if statement for example  if ( count = 3 ) and happily continue when the programmer should have written if ( count == 3 ).


4. Section C Q 9 - yes terrible . A Wireless LAN card will not allow you to connect to the internet outside of your WAP range. You can take a wireless router with a SIM card and plug it in wherever you are and connect to the internet that way, but that comes back to the point you make Mark about needing extra equipment to get on the internet apart from the specs in the question which does indeed come up in Q 10.  


Overall exam pretty good. As usual high on comprehension and no better or worse than previous exams on technical content I think.  

Best Wishes





Kevork Krozian
IT Manager , Forest Hill College
k.krozian at fhc.vic.edu.au
http://www.fhc.vic.edu.au
Mobile: 0419 356 034

>>> Kevin Feely <feely.kevin.k at edumail.vic.gov.au> 19/11/2008 9:06 pm >>>
Hi Mark
yes, you are right. the way i see it this feature is irrelevant.
A Wireless NIC can only connect via a Wireless Access Pont. None of them 
indicate have a *broadband modem* wireless feature.
So they could only be useful in a world wide wireless environment.
Since we dont have this and she would be visiting locations outside of  
free wireless access areas, and there is no mention of Pattie Pies 
Office having WAP points then the wireless NIC is useless.
I think a NIC is good so that software installs, updates, maintenance, 
or if option system A daily uploads/downloads, can be done easily.
Although transfers could be achieved almost as easily via USB.
So for network connection at the office LINUS and FRANKLIN are out as we 
do not know if Pattie has a WAP
With MARCHELL std NIC she can easily plug in to the office systems for 
local and internet connection.

But overall  I think this feature is irrelevant to the choice of device 
simply because they all have network connectivity, although with Linus 
and Franklin you would need to install a little wireless router at the 
office $80 worth.
Other features more important, so as i said - i think this feature is 
irrelevant to making a choice

regards
Kevin


Mark Kelly wrote:
> I'm a bit confused. Wireless LAN (i.e. 802.11) is not going to give 
> them internet access unless every client has a WLAN that they can 
> connect to.
>
> They would need to have broadband wireless - WAN wireless, not LAN 
> wireless. That's unless they have a USB-connected broadband wireless 
> modem.
>
> So, strictly speaking none of the options is acceptable without adding 
> equipment to them.
>
> Did other people read it this way?
>

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