The Flintstones are a cartoon family that, according to the cartoon, lived in prehistoric times. Because I want to discuss the thought process behind some imaginary initial networking standards, the Flintstones seem to be the right group of people to put in the example.
Fred is the president of FredCo, where his wife (Wilma), buddy (Barney), and buddy’s wife (Betty) all work. They all have phones and computers, but they have no network because no one has ever made up the idea of a network before. Fred sees all his employees running around giving each other disks with files on them, and it seems inefficient. So, Fred, being a visionary, imagines a world in which people can connect their computers somehow and exchange files, without having to leave their desks. The (imaginary) first network is about to be born.
So, you are new to networking. You might have seen or heard about different topics relating to networking, but you are only just now getting serious about learning the details. Like many people, your perspective about networks might be that of a user of the network, as opposed to the network engineer who builds networks. For some, that perspective is as a dialup user of the Internet. Others might use a computer at a job or at school; that computer is typically connected to a network via some cable. Figure 1-1 shows the basic end-user perspective of networking.
Figure 1-1 End-User Perspective on Networks
The top part of the figure shows a typical dialup user of the Internet. The user has a PC, and the user plugs in the phone line from the wall into a modem in a PC. By dialing the right phone number, the user connects to the Internet. After connecting, the user can send e-mail, browse web sites, and use other tools and applications as well.
Computer networking or data communication is a most important part of the information technology. Today every business in the world needs a computer network for smooth operations, flexibly, instant communication and data access. Just imagine if there is no network communication in the university campuses, hospitals, multinational organizations and educational institutes then how difficult are to communicate with each other. In this article you will learn the basic overview of a computer network. The targeted audience of this article is the people who want to know about the network communication system, network standards and types.
A computer network is comprised of connectivity devices and components. To share data and resources between two or more computers is known as networking. There are different types of a computer network such as LAN, MAN, WAN and wireless network. The key devices involved that make the infrastructure of a computer network are Hub, Switch, Router, Modem, Access point, LAN card and network cables.
Today it is almost inconceivable for a business not to have computers, whether it is a construction company or a high technology firm. When a business has more than one computer, they are almost always connected together in a local area network. These networks may be more or less advanced and therefore more or less costly.
Companies invest so much (in terms of both money and time) in a local area networks because there are many advantages that a local area network brings to a business and how it is administered.
Some businesses use a local area network in such a way they are highly dependent on it always working. If the company’s network fails, then you may see all the employees chatting away in the corridors because they can’t do their work. This means big losses for the company and causes stresses on the employees. All companies must consider their local area networks a vital asset and downtime must be avoided. This imposes huge demands on the network staff to keep such networks running almost 100% of the time.
The sharing of fax machines, printers, and modems amongst many computers and users reduce the operational cost. A database on a computer network is a very important application as it stores and runs many important data and jobs. Emails and chats can be used for instantaneous communication and sending of files on a computer network.
The computer networks are classified, depending upon the size, as Local Area Networks (LAN), Wide Area Networks (WAN), Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) and Personal Area Networks (PAN). The topology (topology is the way the computer networks and network resources are connected) of the networking can be classified as Bus Network, Ring Network and Star Network.
The networking hardware basically consists of wiring, network cards and a hub. Computer network cards are required so that one computer can understand what the other computer is “talking”. Network cards have a unique MAC address to identify computers on a computer network. Hubs connect all the computers in the network. Hubs can also be used to connect to other hubs to increase the size of the computer network. Two computers can be connected using Ethernet cards or phone lines or power lines for communication, with hardware kits available at roughly a cost of $100.
