A2.1 Network fundamentals questions for IB Computer Science
113 questions on Network fundamentals, written by Augment in the style of IB exam papers. Six of them are below in full, to answer on paper.
- IB Computer Science
- Part of A2 Networks
- SL and HL
Questions by paper and level
SL and HL questions are for students at either level. HL only questions cover what only HL students study.
| Paper | SL and HL | HL only | All |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 | 85 | 28 | 113 |
Counted on
Questions to try
Written by Augment in the style of IB exams, not past papers. Answer them on paper, then check each one against its markscheme with a free account.
A national weather service is replacing part of its traditional forecasting with machine learning models trained on 40 years of satellite, radar and weather-station records. The data takes up several petabytes. The service owns a high-performance computing (HPC) centre.
- (a)
Outline what is meant by a high-performance computing (HPC) centre.
2 marks
- (b)
Describe three hardware requirements for training models on this data.
3 marks
- (c)
The service is considering moving the training to a cloud-based platform instead of upgrading its HPC centre.
Compare an HPC centre and a cloud-based platform for this task.
4 marks
- (d)
Once trained, a model produces a new forecast every hour. Outline why running the trained model needs far less hardware than training it.
2 marks
A fitness-tracker company has 12 million users. Each wristband uploads heart rate, steps, sleep and GPS running routes to the company's servers several times an hour. The app shows each user live statistics, maps their runs, and compares them with friends. The company also wants to sell anonymised, long-term trend reports to health researchers.
The company currently stores everything in one relational database on servers in a single data centre, which is struggling with the volume of data.
- (a)
Identify two types of database, other than relational, that could store parts of this data.
2 marks
- (b)
To what extent should the company replace its single relational database with a combination of alternative databases (for example NoSQL, spatial, in-memory and cloud databases) and a data warehouse?
In your answer you should consider performance, consistency, cost and the needs of the health researchers.
12 marks
A network technician is recording the MAC addresses of a school's laptops. A MAC address is 48 bits long and is normally written in hexadecimal.
- (a)
Two bytes of one address are
1010 1101and0000 1110. Convert each byte to hexadecimal.2 marks
- (b)
Another address starts with the byte
3C. Convert this byte to 8-bit binary.1 mark
- (c)
State the number of hexadecimal digits needed to write a full MAC address.
1 mark
A start-up builds a recipe-sharing website. Its server code is written in an interpreted language so that new features can be deployed several times a day.
- (a)
Outline one reason why an interpreted language helps the start-up deploy features quickly.
2 marks
- (b)
The site now has millions of users, and one function that resizes uploaded images uses most of the server time.
Outline one way the start-up could speed up this function without rewriting the whole site.
2 marks
- (c)
State two features of the start-up's situation that make performance more important now than when it started.
2 marks
A dental clinic has the network shown in Figure 1. Every device is connected by its own cable to one switch.
- (a)
Identify the topology used inside the clinic.
1 mark
- (b)
Outline the effect on the clinic if the cable to Surgery 2 PC is cut.
2 marks
- (c)
Outline the effect on the clinic if the switch fails.
2 marks
- (d)
Explain how using a switch at the centre of the star helps to avoid data collisions on the clinic's network.
3 marks
- (e)
The clinic manager suggests replacing the star with a full mesh, in which every device is cabled directly to every other device.
Discuss whether this would be a sensible change for the clinic.
4 marks
A city is replacing the cables that connect its 40 smart traffic-light controllers to a central control room. One proposal is a wireless mesh, in which each controller relays data for its neighbours. The other is a star, in which every controller has its own fibre link to the control room.
Evaluate the use of the wireless mesh rather than the star for the traffic-light controllers.
6 marks
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More questions in Networks
- A2.1Network fundamentalsThis page
- A2.2Network architecture
- A2.3Data transmissions
- A2.4Network security
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