Int roduction to Networks Friday, July 14,2017 8:29 AM Objectives: ? Differentiate between common network topologies © Bus Ring Star Mesh Hybrid Point-to-point Point-to-multipoint Client-server Peer-to-peer 00000000 What's a Network. 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. To Internet Tablets ms Oo 00000 a ve | oO The Purpose of Networks 1. 2. 3. ys File sharing between two computers. Video chatting between computers located in different parts of the world Surfing the web (for example, to use social media sites, watch streaming video, listen to an Internet radio station, or do research for a school term paper) Instant messaging (IM) between computers with IM software installed E-mail Voice over IP (VoIP), to replace traditional telephony systems‘& Converged Network A term commonly given to a network transporting multiple types of traffic (for example, voice, video, and data) is a Converged Network. Overview of Network Components File Client Server Client Client + Client: The term client defines the device an end user uses to access a network. + Server: A server, as the name suggests, serves up resources to a network. These resources might include e-mail access as provided by an e-mail server, web pages as provided by aweb server, or files available on a file server. + Hub: A hub isa Layer 1 device and does not perform any inspection of the traffic it passes. Rather, a hub simply receives traffic in a port (that is, a receptacle to which a network cable connects) and repeats that traffic out all of the other ports. + Switch: A switch learns which devices reside off of which ports. Asa result, when traffic comes in a switch port, the switch interrogates the traffic to see where itis destined. Then, based on what the switch has learned, the switch forwards the traffic out of the appropriate port, and not out all the otherports. + Router: A router is considered to be a Layer 3 device, which means that it makes its forwarding decisions based on logical network addresses. + Media: The previously mentioned devices need to be interconnected via some sort of media. This media could be copper cabling. It could be a fiber- optic cable. Media might not even be a cable, as is the case with wireless networks, where radio waves travel through the media of air. + WAN link: Today, most networks connect to one or more other networks. The link that interconnects those networks is typically referred to as a wide- area network (WAN) link. ? Local Area Network 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.