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.
