UGANDA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND ADMINISTRATION

THIRD YEAR BACHELOR OF BUSINESS COMPUTING.
Network Business & Distributed Systems Exam

Instructions.
Section A is compulsory.
Answer three questions from Section B.

SECTION A: (40 Marks).

Eco Bank is one of the many banks in Uganda. It has its headquarters in Kampala, where it
operates one branch. It has proceeded to open branches in Mbale, Jinja, Soroti, Mbarara, Lira and
Arua in an effort to extend services to other regions of the country.
In Kampala alone, it has over 1,000 clients and on average, the Kampala branch records over 600
daily transactions. By extending to other parts of the country, it hopes to increase its client base
to 2,500 clients, this when projected will increase its turnover from $30 billion to an estimated
$45 billion within the next two years.
Eco Bank is a large enterprise and plans to employ 500 employees across all branches, the
central branch at the Headquarters having 200 employees and each of the other branches having
50 employees.
After consultation, the bank has advised to have a distributed system to help integrate operations
at various locations around the country.
They have been advised that each branch should have its own network and shares resources like
printers, monitors etc. Further more, the network should be connected to the central database
server in Kampala, and transactions made are should be written directly to the central database
server. In addition, the bank has been encouraged use IBBE banking software to perform
transactions and this software has to be installed at every branch.
An employee can connect to the Internet but is via the branch network which receives its
connectivity from the central server, which is serves as the gateway to the Internet. Each
employees has a work station from which they access the network and perform the transactions.
They been advised to enforce security by implementing firewalls and Secure Layers etc.
Furthermore, the bank has encouraged to use the latest networking technology and use
transmission media that will enhance quick and easy transaction processing.

You have been hired to design and implement the distributed system based on the proposals
given after the Bank made consultation.

Requirements:
You are required to present a formal plan of the Distributed System and explain how you you are
going to implement it.
Your plan should include:

(I) A diagrammatic expression of the layout of the network you intend to implement.
(II) Departments and their locations.
(III) Various nodes on the network, their types and roles.
(IV) Networking devices and routers.
 (V) Various network topologies employed.
(VI) Naming to be used in network.
(VII) Network architecture.
(VIII) Network Security to be enforced.
(IX) Distributed File System.
(X) Database and DBMS to be employed.

SECTION B: (60 MARKS).

QUESTION ONE
A systems designer working for the ministry of IT has been given a task of designing a client-
server System;
a) Give six (6) reasons (benefits) for developing the system using the client-server software
Architecture. (12 Marks).
b) Briefly explain four (4) factors he should consider to determine which Client-server
Model to Use. (8 Marks)

QUESTION TWO
a) Keizzia Royal is a Systems developer working for Air Uganda. Briefly explain the three
components (Levels) of the Two-Tier client-server software Architecture that can help her
design and deploy a Client-Server Ticking System for Air Uganda. (10 Marks). ).

b) The IT Department of Stanbic Bank has submitted a proposal for developing a

Distributed Information System. As a newly recruited Information Systems graduate in
the IT Department, you are presented with the task of defending the proposal. Briefly
discuss six reasons of implementing a Distributed System in this Bank? (10 marks)

QUESTION THREE
(a)You have been appointed to work asa Networks specialists in Orange Telecom. Explain how
you would use each of the following protocol, giving a real world example:
(i) FTP.
(iii) POP
(iii) IMAP.
(iv)HTTP.
(v) DNS (2 marks each)

(b) Distinguish between UDP and TCP transport protocols, clearly explaining how how each
performs its transport function. (10 marks).

QUESTION FOUR

a) Give four examples of resources to be shared in a distributed system. 2 marks.

b) Explain what is meant by (distribution) transparency 2 marks.
 c) With the aid of an illustration, distinguish between a two-tier and a three tier system.
Explain why large databases and information systems use two-tier and not three-tier
systems. (8 marks)
d) Define the following notions (related to transactions):
i. Atomicity (2 marks)
ii. Consistency (2 marks).
iii. Isolation (2 marks).
iv. Durability (2 marks).

QUESTION FIVE
As a student of Networking, you have been approached by the university cashier to help him in
approving and funding the budget for the Networking department towards procuring some
equipment. Your role is to explain the following terms and quicken the process of decision
making.
i. Addressing(4mrks)

ii. Multiplexing(4mrks)

iii. Interior Routing(4mrks)

iv. Autonomous System (4mrks)

v. Circuit switching and Packet Switching (4mrks)