Computer Networks Introduction for Beginners

Introduction: Key Points

  • Computer networks are a collection of numerous, dispersed, but linked computers.
  • A computer network is a communications network that enables the exchange of data between computers.
  • Using cable or wireless media, the physical link between networked computing devices is established. The Internet is the most well-known computer network.
  • Network nodes are hardware components that originate, route, and terminate data transmissions. Networking gear as well as hosts like servers and personal computers can be considered nodes.
  • When a process in one device can communicate with a process in another device, two devices are said to be networked.
  • A software system constructed on top of a network is referred to as a distributed system. It has a high level of coherence thanks to the software.

Goals and Application of Computer Networks

Computer Network has a ton of application however the some of the categories that most of the applications of computer networks falls into are as follows:

  • Business Applications
  • Mobile Users
  • Social Issues
  • Home Applications

        Goals :

               Resource sharing, high reliability, cost reduction, communication medium, etc.

1. Business Applications :

  • Resource sharing: The objective is to make all software, hardware, and especially data available to anyone on the network regardless of the resource's or the user's physical location. an example of sharing a printer.
  • One extended network can be created by connecting the separate networks at various locations using networks known as VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). (Sharing resources)
  • Customer-server model On large computers known as servers, data is kept. These are frequently kept up by a system administrator in a central location.
  • On their desks, the employees have more basic devices known as clients that they use to access remote data. A network links the client and server computers together
  • A Web application is the client-server model's most common application.
    (Web browser and server)

2. Home Applications

  • Access to remote information
  • Person-to-person communication
  • Interactive entertainment
  • Electronic commerce 
  • Internet access provides home users with connectivity to remote computers.
  • peer-to-peer communication (no server, client)
  • instant messaging.
  • social network applications: Twitter Facebook
  • Wikipedia an online encyclopedia

3. Mobile Users

  • Connectivity to the Internet
  • Wireless hotspots based on the 802.11
  • Mobile Phone: Text messaging, SMS
  • Smartphones (3G, 4G, 5G)
  • GPS (Global Positioning System)

             

  • GPS (Global Positioning System)
  • Networks of nodes known as sensor networks: these networks collect and wirelessly transmit data about the physical world from their sensed conditions. The nodes could be tiny standalone gadgets or they could be a component of everyday objects like vehicles or phones.
  • Computers that can be worn: smartwatches, pens, etc.

4. Social Issues

  • Along with the good comes the bad.
  • Unsolved social, political, and ethical issues.
  • Topics are Politics religion etc
  • Pirated music and movies: DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)
  • Profiling users ( Personal information): cookies, email providers like Gmail.
  • Criminal behavior: hacking, virus attack, cybercrime, etc.

NETWORK HARDWARE

There are two types of transmission technology that are in widespread use:

  • broadcast links
  • point-to-point links.

Individual machine pairs are connected by point-to-point links. On a network made up of point-to-point links, small messages—referred to as packets in some contexts—might need to stop at one or more intermediary machines before reaching their final destination. There are frequently many, different-length routes available.

In a broadcast network, every machine on the network shares the same communication channel, allowing every machine on the network to receive packets delivered by any other machine. Each packet has an address field that identifies the intended recipient. A machine examines the address field in a packet after it is received. A common example of a broadcast link is a wireless network, where communication is spread over a coverage area that is dependent on the wireless channel and the sending device.

        

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