Many companies allow their employees to access the company’s servers from the remote locations. LAN, MAN and WAN are the most common types of the computer network.
The commonly used devices are the routers, switches, bridges, brouter, modems, Ethernet card and hubs. A network can be implemented by the following two methods.
Wired networks require the physical cables (UTP/STP, Coaxial cable or fiber optic), HUB/Switch, Server operating system and the LAN card in every computer.
Wired networks are ideal for the locations where cluttered wires are not possible and the data and resources are shared without the use of cables. It requires the wireless router, Access point, PCMCIA LAN card in every computer. Wireless communication mediums are radio waves and microwaves.
Network Architecture
Network architecture can be classified into the following two categories
In the Client/server model, there is a centralized server (domain controller) that controls and all the computers are dependant on it.
In the Peer to Peer model, there is no centralized server and every computer acts as a server and client and the same time. All the computers are the part of the same workgroup. Workgroup is used in the places where security is not the main concern.
Protocols
Protocols are the communication stands, agreed upon ways and the language, which two computers understand in order to send and receive the data. There are different protocol such as TCP/IP, FTP, DHCP, BOOTP, SNMP, LDAP, RIP, NNTP, PPTP and L2TP. TCP/IP is a suite of protocols that contains a large number of communication protocols.
Topologies
A network can be implemented by different physical layouts and designs, which are known as topologies. The most common topologies are star, bus, mesh, tree and hybrid. Star topology is the most commonly used topology in the Ethernet based LAN.
Benefits of Networking
Computer networking provides a lot of benefits to every type of the organization where two or more computers are used.
- You can connect your entire office with the Internet.
- You can store commonly used files on the shared drives so that other users in your office can access them.
- You can share the software the multiple users in your LAN.
- You can share the resources such as hard disk, printer, scanner, CD/DVD-ROM and internet with the others users.
- With the intra office Email system you can send the emails and pop up messages to your co-workers.
- With the Surveillance software you can monitor the activities of your employees.
- An important message can be conveyed to all the users of your office in seconds.
- You can install and troubleshoot the remote computer.
- You can access your office computer from your home or from the other remote location with your laptop.
- You can interact with your clients, process orders and make long distance calls with the IP telephony.
- All the computers in your office can be monitored, troubleshoot, scanned for viruses and diagnosed from the centralized server computer.
- Computer networking provides you the fast, flexible, secure, cost effective and excellent work experience.
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