Network Concepts

Getting Started

Network

A network is a group of entities connected together. An example of a network is the telephone system (see Figure 1.1). A telephone network has a number of telephones connected to the telephone exchange. The exchange facilitates communication among the networked telephones. A computer network is a collection of computers and other devices that can send data to and receive data from one another. In other words, a computer network is a data communication system that interconnects computer systems (see Figure 1.2). A network may be a combination of LANs (Local Area Networks), MANs (Metropolitan Area Networks) or WANs (Wide Area Networks). Each machine on a network is called a node. Most of them are computers but printers, gateways, scanners, etc. can also be nodes. Every node on a network has a unique address.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2