There are legions of people who, if asked to define a wide area network (WAN), just couldn’t do it. Yet most of them use the big dog of all WANs—the Internet—every day With that in mind, you can imagine that WAN networks are what we use to span large geographic areas and truly go the …
This can be kind of confusing because when people refer to hosts, they really can be referring to almost any type of networking devices—including workstations and servers. But if you dig a bit deeper, you’ll find that usually this term comes up when people are talking about resources and jobs that have to do with …
Servers are powerful computers. They get their name because they truly are “at the service” of the network and run specialized software known as the network operating system to maintain and control the network. In a good design that optimizes the network’s performance, servers are highly specialized and are there to handle one important labor-intensive …
Workstations are often seriously powerful computers that run more than one central processing unit (CPU) and whose resources are available to other users on the network to access when needed. Workstations are often employed as systems that end users use on a daily basis. Don’t confuse workstations with client machines, which can be workstations but …
There are a lot of different machines, devices, and media that make up our networks. Let’s talk about three of the most common:■ Workstations■ Servers■ Hosts Workstations Workstations are often seriously powerful computers that run more than one central processing unit (CPU) and whose resources are available to other users on the network to access …
Just as the name implies, a local area network (LAN) is usually restricted to spanning a particular geographic location such as an office building, a single department within a corporate office, or even a home office. Back in the day, you couldn’t put more than 30 workstations on a LAN, and you had to cope …
The dictionary defines the word network as “a group or system of interconnected people or things.” Similarly, in the computer world, the term network means two or more connected computers that can share resources such as data and applications, office machines, an Internet connection, or some combination of these, The Local Area Network Just as …
Introduction to Networks What’s a computer Network? The Local Area Network Common computer Network Components computer Workstations network Servers Hosts Wide Area Network Network Architecture Peer-to-Peer Networks Client-Server Networks Physical Network Topologies bus network topology Star network Topology advantages and disadvantage of star network topology Ring network Topology Mesh network Topology Point-to-Point network Topology Topology …