Networking Stuff – Some Basics that Everyone Ought to Know

You might be working in an office environment or plan to set up your own office with computers which can communicate amongst themselves. For that you definitely need to know some basic level of networking stuff which will come in handy. You might not be a hardcore technical guy, but knowing these basics will surely help you a lot for any indispensable level of troubleshooting or interaction with a techie. First and foremost, by the term ‘networking’ we mean the method or procedure by which two computers are inter-connected with the aim of data sharing. Both software and hardware aspects are involved for the purpose of setting up a successful network.

Now, based upon the area of networking, networks can be primarily categorized under three entities. One is what we know as LAN (acronym for local area network); the second one is known as WAN (Wide Area Network) and thirdly MAN (Metropolitan area network). Apart from these three, there are other types of designs which are used based upon their scope/scale like, SAN (storage area network), CAN (Campus Area Network), PAN (Personal Area Network) and DAN (Desk Area Network). It is worth mentioning over here that internet, which we use so rampantly is an instance of the largest WAN which has its public reach across the world over. Now after we have got an idea about the first aspect of networking stuff let us try to understand the next step in network design.

The principal types of high level design in networking are that of client-server type, and the second, peer-to-peer type. In places where there is a centralized computer, known as server, which controls and transmits data to all the other computers and also stores the important applications, files and web pages we see the occurrence of the first type. In big corporate and business setups this kind of network is predominant. On the other hand, in a peer-to-peer kind of network all the computers equally participate and communicate within themselves with the purpose of achieving the common functions. These networks are more prominent is small home-based setups.  So, if you are planning to set up your own setup, you ought to know the scale at which you would like your setup to be and at that time these networking stuff would be useful.

Apart from these fundamental concepts, there are various network topologies which are existent from the structural point of view like star, ring, mesh and bus. Lastly, it needs to be remembered that for communication the existence of a language is imperative and the way computers communicate amongst themselves is known as a protocol. The most commonly found protocol is TCP/IP which is implemented for communication though internet. This was really a very brief overview of networking stuff and for gaining more knowledge further studies and specialization are required.