Computer Networks

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Computer networking is the scientific and engineering discipline concerned with communication between computer systems. Such networks involve at least two computers separated by a few inches (e.g. via Bluetooth) or thousands of miles (e.g. via the Internet). Computer networking is sometimes considered a sub-discipline of telecommunications.

Types of Networks

Local Area Network

A local area network (LAN) is a computer network covering a small local area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings such as a home, office, or college. Current LANs are most likely to be based on switched Ethernet or Wi-Fi technology running at 10, 100 or 1,000 Mbit/s (1,000 Mbit/s is also known as 1 Gbit/s).

The defining characteristics of LANs in contrast to WANs are: a) much higher data rates, b) smaller geographic range - at most a few kilometers - and c) they do not involve leased telecommunication lines. "LAN" usually does not refer to data running over local analog telephone lines, as on a private branch exchange (PBX).

Wider Area Network

A wide area network or WAN is a computer network covering a wide geographical area, involving a vast array of computers. This is different from personal area networks (PANs), metropolitan area networks (MANs) or local area networks (LANs) that are usually limited to a room, building or campus. The most well-known example of a WAN is the Internet.

WANs are used to connect local area networks (LANs) together, so that users and computers in one location can communicate with users and computers in other locations. Many WANs are built for one particular organization and are private. Others, built by Internet service providers, provide connections from an organization's LAN to the Internet. WANs are most often built using leased lines. At each end of the leased line, a router connects to the LAN on one side and a hub within the WAN on the other. Network protocols including TCP/IP deliver transport and addressing functions. Protocols including Packet over SONET/SDH, MPLS, ATM and Frame relay are often used by service providers to deliver the links that are used in WANs. X.25 was an important early WAN protocol, and is often considered to be the "grandfather" of Frame Relay as many of the underlying protocols and functions of X.25 are still in use today (with upgrades) by Frame Relay.

Metropolitan Area Network

Metropolitan Area Networks or MANs are large computer networks usually spanning a campus or a city. They typically use wireless infrastructure or optical fiber connections to link their sites. For instance a university or college may have a MAN that joins together many of their local area networks (LANs) situated around site of a fraction of a square kilometer. Then from their MAN they could have several wide area network (WAN) links to other universities or the Internet.

Some technologies used for this purpose are ATM, FDDI and SMDS. These older technologies are in the process of being displaced by Ethernet-based MANs (e.g. Metro Ethernet) in most areas. MAN links between LANs have been built without cables using either microwave, radio, or infra-red free-space optical communication links. DQDB, Distributed Queue Dual Bus, is the Metropolitan Area Network standard for data communication. It is specified in the IEEE 802.6 standard. Using DQDB, networks can be up to 30 miles long and operate at speeds of 34 to 155 Mbit/s. Several notable networks started as MANs, such as the Internet peering points MAE-West and MAE-East and the Sohonet media network.

Personal Area Network

A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network used for communication among computer devices (including telephones and personal digital assistants) close to one person. The devices may or may not belong to the person in question. The reach of a PAN is typically a few meters. PANs can be used for communication among the personal devices themselves (intrapersonal communication), or for connecting to a higher level network and the Internet (an uplink).

Personal area networks may be wired with computer buses such as USB and FireWire. A wireless personal area network (WPAN) can also be made possible with network technologies such as IrDA and Bluetooth.

Internet

The Internet, or simply the Net, is the publicly accessible worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP). It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic, and government networks. It carries various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

Contrary to some common usage, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous: the Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections etc.; the Web is a collection of interconnected documents, linked by hyperlinks and URLs, and is accessible using the Internet.

Network Topology

A network topology is the pattern of links connecting pairs of nodes of a network. A given node has one or more links to others, and the links can appear in a variety of different shapes. The simplest connection is a one-way link between two devices. A second return link can be added for two-way communication. Modern communications cables usually include more than one wire in order to facilitate this, although very simple bus-based networks have two-way communication on a single wire. Network topology is determined only by the configuration of connections between nodes; it is therefore a part of graph theory. Distances between nodes, physical interconnections, transmission rates, and/or signal types are not a matter of network topology, although they may be affected by it in an actual physical network.

A bus network is a network architecture in which a set of clients are connected via a shared communications line, called a bus. There are several common instances of the bus architecture, including one in the motherboard of most computers, and those in some versions of Ethernet networks.

Star networks are one of the most common computer network topologies. In its simplest form, a star network consists of one central switch, or hub computer which acts as a router to transmit messages.

A ring network is a topology of computer networks where each node is connected to two other nodes, so as to create a ring. The most popular example is a token ring network. Ring networks tend to be inefficient when compared to star networks because data must travel through more points before reaching its destination. For example, if a given ring network has eight computers on it, to get from computer one to computer four, data must travel from computer one, through computers two and three, and to its destination at computer four. It could also go from computer one through eight, seven, six, and five until reaching four, but this method is slower because it travels through more computers.

Mesh networking is a way to route data, voice and instructions between nodes. It allows for continuous connections and reconfiguration around blocked paths by "hopping" from node to node until a connection can be established. Mesh networks are self-healing: the network can still operate even when a node breaks down or a connection goes bad. As a result, a very reliable network is formed. This concept is applicable to wireless networks, wired networks, and software interaction.

A star-bus network is a combination of a star network and a bus network. A hub (or concentrator) is used to connect the nodes to the network. It is a combination of the linear bus and star topologies and operates over one main communication line.

Network Devices

Computer networking devices are units that mediate data in a computer network. Computer networking devices are also called network equipment, Intermediate Systems (IS) or InterWorking Unit (IWU). Units which are the last receiver or generate data are called hosts or data terminal equipment.

Common basic network devices

Gateway: device sitting at a network node for interfacing with another network that uses different protocols. Works on OSI layers 4 to 7.

Router: a specialized network device that determines the next network point to which to forward a data packet toward its destination. Unlike a gateway, it cannot interface different protocols. Works on OSI layer 3.

Bridge: a device that connects multiple network segments along the data link layer. Works on OSI layer 2.

Switch: a device that allocates traffic from one network segment to certain lines (intended destination(s)) which connect the segment to another network segment. So unlike a hub a switch splits the network traffic and sends it to different destinations rather than to all systems on the network. Works on OSI layer 2.

Hub: connects multiple Ethernet segments together making them act as a single segment. When using a hub, every attached device shares the same broadcast domain and the same collision domain. Therefore, only one computer connected to the hub is able to transmit at a time. Depending on the network topology, the hub provides a basic level 1 OSI model connection among the network objects (workstations, servers, etc). It provides bandwidth which is shared among all the objects, compared to switches, which provide a dedicated connection between individual nodes. Works on OSI layer 1.

Repeater: device to amplify or regenerate digital signals received while setting them from one part of a network into another. Works on OSI layer 1.

Network Monitoring

The term network monitoring describes the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing systems and that notifies the network administrator in case of outages via email, pager or other alarms. It is a subset of the functions involved in network management.

While an intrusion detection system monitors a network for threats from the outside, a network monitoring system monitors the network for problems due to overloaded and/or crashed servers, network connections or other devices.

For example, to determine the status of a webserver, monitoring software may periodically send an HTTP request to fetch a page; for email servers, a test message might be sent through SMTP and retrieved by IMAP or POP3.

Status request failures, such as when a connection cannot be established, it times-out, or the document or message cannot be retrieved, usually produce an action from the monitoring system. These actions vary: an alarm may be sent out to the resident sysadmin, automatic failover systems may be activated to remove the troubled server from duty until it can be repaired, etcetera.

Monitoring the performance of a network uplink is also known as network traffic measurement, and more software is listed there.

Links

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ITtoolbox: Provides a knowledge network and support environment for the IT industry. As IT professionals or business decision-makers need information to complete a task or make a decision, they turn to ITtoolbox to quickly get specific answers to their unique questions.ITtoolbox provides a knowledge network and support environment for the IT industry. As IT professionals or business decision-makers need information to complete a task or make a decision, they turn to ITtoolbox to quickly get specific answers to their unique questions.

Networking on the Network: "Networking on the Network" includes good advice, accumulated from dozens of people over many years not updated since 2002. It is maintained by Phil Agre, Department of Information Studies University of California, Los Angeles, who wants to get it into the hands of every PhD student in the world.

ZDNet Networking: Regular updates, news, articles, features and more. ZDNET provides an invaluable perspective and resources so that users can get the most out of their investments in technology.

Cisco Networking Academy Program: The Cisco Networking Academy Program is a partnership between Cisco Systems, education, business, government, and community organizations around the world. The Networking Academy curriculum centers on teaching students to design, build, and maintain computer networks. The Program prepares students for the 21st Century workplace, while serving as a valuable model for e-learning.

Networking Search Engine & Resource Our goal is to: Unearth networking information buried out there! Disseminate networking knowledge! Our task is to determine who solved a given network problem first. Alternately, who published first a publication on a given computer network field. It is a sort of computer network historian job. That is why you see dates at the end of the links. If you know a good reference with early date please let us know. We surely appreciate your input.

South Kitsap Business Networking -South Kitsap Business Networking (SKBN) is a friendly group of small business professionals joined together to foster local business and provide referrals for one another. If you are in need of quality local business services, look through our Services Directory for your local business needs.

Cisco Systems - Networking for the Internet - If anyone can lay claim to a 'heritage' in an industry as young as global networking, then it is Cisco. Not only does 85 per cent of Internet traffic travel across Cisco's systems, we also use the Internet to run our on business online, from product orders and inventory management through to staff communications and travel expenses.

Free Network Tutorials - NETgLearning.com is a powerful learning management solution that provides you with the ability to gather information to meet mission-critical business objectives--quickly and efficiently. Login to access a vast range of blended instruction, including e-Learning and e-Reference books, search options to assist you with the current task at hand, plus around-the-clock access to virtual advisors.

Networking Tutorials.com - Lantronix have put together these tutorials to help provide you with a solid foundation and understanding of basic networking protocols and techniques as well as serial to Ethernet/802.11 device server technology.

Basic Networking Tutoria (pdf file). A basic networking tutorial in pdf format prepared by Sangay Yeshi.

Suggestions for Further Reading

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