Computer Networks

Computer networking is the ability to connect computers together, all over the place, whether over continents or only a few meters away. During the old days computers used to be connected through a series of wires, and the availability to connect via internet at that was still unavailable. The main purpose to connect a series of computers together is to share information. For example, a computer can do a certain task while another computer does another task. Double amounts of work will be carried out, and the computers, using networks, can share the information that they processed.

There are 3 main types of networks, they are the Local Area Networks ( LAN), the Wide Area Networks (WAN) and the Wireless LAN and WAN.

Local area networks are networks to connect small amounts of people. For example, in offices, where only a small amount of computers are connected. In the past, LAN's Were considered to be much faster than WAN's which is why they were commonly used before.

Wide area networks are considered to be the opposite of LAN's. The main purpose of wide area networks is to connect computers far away from each other by wires, historically. During wars, Wide area networks were extremely important and had a significant importance to the result of those wars because they were able to connect via long distances which was a leap in technology at that time.

Wireless LAN and WAN are exactly the same, however, they are connected without wires but through radio waves. This technology was available for the customer recently, which was also another great leap in technology as well and changed the way people live at this time. Wireless networks have become a common thing in our daily world.

A Network Topology is a method in which computers or other devices connected to computers are connected. There are man different types of Network topology's and the common ones are the Bus, Star and Ring networks.

The Ring, Star, Bus and other types of networks are shown above in the diagram.

Computer networking has severely improved our lives and made out lives much easier. We must not only think that networking is to do with computers desktops or laptops only, computers are everywhere! The cell phones we use have computers in them, and because of the idea of networking, we are able to call anywhere around the world at any place desired.

Questions-

How can networking develop our even more?

What possible procedures do we need to take to ensure that our shared information is safe?

How can we prevent viruses coming across from peer-peer networking?

  References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_networking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_networking#Local_area_network_.28LAN.29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NetworkTopologies.png