Computer network

"Computer networks" redirects here. For the periodical, see Computer Networks (journal).
Operating systems

Common features

 Process management
 Interrupts
 Memory management
 Virtual file system
 Device drivers
 Networking
 Security
 Graphical user interfaces

v • d • e

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of computers and

devices connected by communications channels that facilitates communications among users and
allows users to share resources with other users. Networks may be classified according to a wide
variety of characteristics. This article provides a general overview of types and categories and
also presents the basic components of a network.

Contents
  1 Introduction
o 1.1 Purpose
 2 Network classification
o 2.1 Connection method
o 2.2 Wired technologies
o 2.3 Wireless technologies
o 2.4 Scale
o 2.5 Functional relationship (network architecture)
o 2.6 Network topology
 3 Types of networks
o 3.1 Personal area network
o 3.2 Local area network
 3.2.1 Home area network
o 3.3 Campus network
o 3.4 Wide area network
o 3.5 Global area network
o 3.6 Enterprise Private Network
o 3.7 Virtual private network
o 3.8 Internetwork
 3.8.1 Internet
 3.8.2 Intranets and extranets
 3.8.3 Overlay Network
 4 Basic hardware components
o 4.1 Network interface cards
o 4.2 Repeaters
o 4.3 Hubs
o 4.4 Bridges
o 4.5 Switches
o 4.6 Routers


Introduction
A computer network allows sharing of resources and information among devices connected to
the network. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) funded the design of the
Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) for the United States Department of
Defense. It was the first operational computer network in the world.[1] Development of the
network began in 1969, based on designs developed during the 1960s. For a history, see
ARPANET.

Purpose
Computer networks can be used for several purposes:

 Facilitating communications. Using a network, people can communicate efficiently and

easily via e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, telephone, video telephone calls, and
video conferencing.
 Sharing hardware. In a networked environment, each computer on a network can access
and use hardware on the network. Suppose several personal computers on a network each
require the use of a laser printer. If the personal computers and a laser printer are
connected to a network, each user can then access the laser printer on the network, as
they need it.
 Sharing files, data, and information. In a network environment, any authorized user can
access data and information stored on other computers on the network. The capability of
providing access to data and information on shared storage devices is an important
feature of many networks.
 Sharing software. Users connected to a network can access application programs on the
network.

Network classification
The following list presents categories used for classifying networks.

Connection method

Computer networks can be classified according to the hardware and software technology that is
used to interconnect the individual devices in the network, such as optical fiber, Ethernet,
Wireless LAN, HomePNA, Power line communication or G.hn.

Ethernet uses physical wiring to connect devices. Frequently deployed devices include hubs,
switches, bridges and/or routers. Wireless LAN technology is designed to connect devices
without wiring. These devices use radio waves or infrared signals as a transmission medium.
ITU-T G.hn technology uses existing home wiring (coaxial cable, phone lines and power lines)
to create a high-speed (up to 1 Gigabit/s) local area network.

Wired technologies

 Twisted pair wire is the most widely used medium for telecommunication. Twisted-pair
wires are ordinary telephone wires which consist of two insulated copper wires twisted
into pairs and are used for both voice and data transmission. The use of two wires twisted
together helps to reduce crosstalk and electromagnetic induction. The transmission speed
ranges from 2 million bits per second to 100 million bits per second.

 Coaxial cable is widely used for cable television systems, office buildings, and other
worksites for local area networks. The cables consist of copper or aluminum wire
wrapped with insulating layer typically of a flexible material with a high dielectric
constant, all of which are surrounded by a conductive layer. The layers of insulation help
 minimize interference and distortion. Transmission speed range from 200 million to more
than 500 million bits per second.

 Optical fiber cable consists of one or more filaments of glass fiber wrapped in protective
layers. It transmits light which can travel over extended distances without signal loss.
Fiber-optic cables are not affected by electromagnetic radiation. Transmission speed may
reach trillions of bits per second. The transmission speed of fiber optics is hundreds of
times faster than for coaxial cables and thousands of times faster than for twisted-pair
wire.

Wireless technologies

 Terrestrial Microwave – Terrestrial microwaves use Earth-based transmitter and receiver.

The equipment look similar to satellite dishes. Terrestrial microwaves use low-gigahertz
range, which limits all communications to line-of-sight. Path between relay stations
spaced approx. 30 miles apart. Microwave antennas are usually placed on top of
buildings, towers, hills, and mountain peaks.

 Communications Satellites – The satellites use microwave radio as their

telecommunications medium which are not deflected by the Earth's atmosphere. The
satellites are stationed in space, typically 22,000 miles (for geosynchronous satellites)
above the equator. These Earth-orbiting systems are capable of receiving and relaying
voice, data, and TV signals.

 Cellular and PCS Systems – Use several radio communications technologies. The
systems are divided to different geographic area. Each area has low-power transmitter or
radio relay antenna device to relay calls from one area to the next area.

 Wireless LANs – Wireless local area network use a high-frequency radio technology
similar to digital cellular and a low-frequency radio technology. Wireless LANs use
spread spectrum technology to enable communication between multiple devices in a
limited area. An example of open-standards wireless radio-wave technology is IEEE

 Infrared communication , which can transmit signals between devices within small
distances not more than 10 meters peer to peer or ( face to face ) without any body in the
line of transmitting.

Scale

Networks are often classified as local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN),
metropolitan area network (MAN), personal area network (PAN), virtual private network (VPN),
campus area network (CAN), storage area network (SAN), and others, depending on their scale,
scope and purpose. (e.g., Controller Area Network (CAN)) Usage, trust level, and access right
often differ between these types of networks. For example, LANs tend to be designed for internal
use by an organization's internal systems and employees in individual physical locations (such as
a building), while WANs may connect physically separate parts of an organization and may
include connections to third parties.

Functional relationship (network architecture)

Computer networks may be classified according to the functional relationships which exist
among the elements of the network, e.g., active networking, client–server and peer-to-peer
(workgroup) architecture.

Network topology

Main article: Network topology

Computer networks may be classified according to the network topology upon which the
network is based, such as bus network, star network, ring network, mesh network. Network
topology is the coordination by which devices in the network are arranged in their logical
relations to one another, independent of physical arrangement. Even if networked computers are
physically placed in a linear arrangement and are connected to a hub, the network has a star
topology, rather than a bus topology. In this regard the visual and operational characteristics of a
network are distinct. Networks may be classified based on the method of data used to convey the
data, these include digital and analog networks.

Types of networks
Common types of computer networks may be identified by their scale.

Personal area network

A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network used for communication among computer
and different information technological devices close to one person. Some examples of devices
that are used in a PAN are personal computers, printers, fax machines, telephones, PDAs,
scanners, and even video game consoles. A PAN may include wired and wireless connections
between devices. The reach of a PAN typically extends to 10 meters.[2] A wired PAN is usually
constructed with USB and Firewire connections while technologies such as Bluetooth and
infrared communication typically form a wireless PAN

Local area network

A local area network (LAN) is a network that connects computers and devices in a limited
geographical area such as home, school, computer laboratory, office building, or closely
positioned group of buildings. Each computer or device on the network is a node. Current wired
LANs are most likely to be based on Ethernet technology, although new standards like ITU-T
G.hn also provide a way to create a wired LAN using existing home wires (coaxial cables, phone
lines and power lines).[3]
Typical library network, in a branching tree topology and controlled access to resources

All interconnected devices must understand the network layer (layer 3), because they are
handling multiple subnets (the different colors). Those inside the library, which have only 10/100
Mbit/s Ethernet connections to the user device and a Gigabit Ethernet connection to the central
router, could be called "layer 3 switches" because they only have Ethernet interfaces and must
understand IP. It would be more correct to call them access routers, where the router at the top is
a distribution router that connects to the Internet and academic networks' customer access
routers.

The defining characteristics of LANs, in contrast to WANs (Wide Area Networks), include their
higher data transfer rates, smaller geographic range, and no need for leased telecommunication
lines. Current Ethernet or other IEEE 802.3 LAN technologies operate at speeds up to 10 Gbit/s.
This is the data transfer rate. IEEE has projects investigating the standardization of 40 and 100
Gbit/s.[4]

[edit] Home area network

A home area network (HAN)is a residential LAN which is used for communication between
digital devices typically deployed in the home, usually a small number of personal computers
and accessories, such as printers and mobile computing devices. An important function is the
sharing of Internet access, often a broadband service through a CATV or Digital Subscriber Line
(DSL) provider. It can also be referred as Office area network(OAN).

Campus network

A campus network is a computer network made up of an interconnection of local area networks

(LANs) within a limited geographical area. The networking equipments (switches, routers) and
transmission media (optical fiber, copper plant, Cat5 cabling etc.) are almost entirely owned (by
the campus tenant / owner: an enterprise, university, government etc.).

In the case of a university campus-based campus network, the network is likely to link a variety
of campus buildings including; academic departments, the university library and student
residence halls.

Wide area network

A wide area network (WAN) is a computer network that covers a large geographic area such as a
city, country, or spans even intercontinental distances, using a communications channel that
combines many types of media such as telephone lines, cables, and air waves. A WAN often
uses transmission facilities provided by common carriers, such as telephone companies. WAN
technologies generally function at the lower three layers of the OSI reference model: the physical
layer, the data link layer, and the network layer.

Global area network

A global area network (GAN) is a network used for supporting mobile communications across an
arbitrary number of wireless LANs, satellite coverage areas, etc. The key challenge in mobile
communications is handing off the user communications from one local coverage area to the
next. In IEEE Project 802, this involves a succession of terrestrial WIRELESS local area
networks (WLAN).[5]

Enterprise Private Network

An Enterprise Private Network is a network build by an enterprise to interconnect the various

company sites (production sites, head offices, remote offices, shops etc.) in order to share
computer resources over the network.

Sample EPN made of Frame relay WAN connections and dialup remote access.

Virtual private network

Sample VPN used to interconnect 3 office and Remote users

A virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network in which some of the links between
nodes are carried by open connections or virtual circuits in some larger network (e.g., the
Internet) instead of by physical wires. The data link layer protocols of the virtual network are
said to be tunneled through the larger network when this is the case. One common application is
secure communications through the public Internet, but a VPN need not have explicit security
features, such as authentication or content encryption. VPNs, for example, can be used to
separate the traffic of different user communities over an underlying network with strong
security features.

A VPN may have best-effort performance, or may have a defined service level agreement (SLA)
between the VPN customer and the VPN service provider. Generally, a VPN has a topology
more complex than point-to-point.

Internetwork

An Internetwork is the connection of two or more private computer networks via a common
switching (OSI Layer 2) or routing technology (OSI Layer 3) and owned by separate entities
(public or private). The result is called an internetwork. The Internet is an aggregation of many
internetworks, hence its name was shortened to Internet.

Any interconnection between public, private, commercial, industrial, or governmental networks

may also be defined as an internetwork or (more often) an extranet.

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected governmental, academic, corporate, public, and
private computer networks. It is based on the networking technologies of the Internet Protocol
Suite. It is the successor of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET)
developed by DARPA of the U.S. Department of Defense. The Internet is also the
communications backbone underlying the World Wide Web (WWW). The 'Internet' is most
commonly spelled with a capital 'I' as a proper noun, for historical reasons and to distinguish it
from other generic internetworks.

Participants in the Internet use a diverse array of methods of several hundred documented, and
often standardized, protocols compatible with the Internet Protocol Suite and an addressing
system (IP Addresses) administered by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and address
registries. Service providers and large enterprises exchange information about the reachability of
their address spaces through the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), forming a redundant
worldwide mesh of transmission paths.

Intranets and extranets

Intranets and extranets are parts or extensions of a computer network, usually a local area
network.

An intranet is a set of networks, using the Internet Protocol and IP-based tools such as web
browsers and file transfer applications, that is under the control of a single administrative entity.
That administrative entity closes the intranet to all but specific, authorized users. Most
commonly, an intranet is the internal network of an organization. A large intranet will typically
have at least one web server to provide users with organizational information.

An extranet is a network that is limited in scope to a single organization or entity and also has
limited connections to the networks of one or more other usually, but not necessarily, trusted
organizations or entities (e.g., a company's customers may be given access to some part of its
intranet creating in this way an extranet, while at the same time the customers may not be
considered 'trusted' from a security standpoint). Technically, an extranet may also be categorized
as a CAN, MAN, WAN, or other type of network, although, by definition, an extranet cannot
consist of a single LAN; it must have at least one connection with an external network.

Overlay Network

An overlay network is a computer network that is built on top of another network. Nodes in the
overlay can be thought of as being connected by virtual or logical links, each of which
corresponds to a path, perhaps through many physical links, in the underlying network.
A sample overlay network: IP over SONET over Optical

Nodes in the overlay can be thought of as being connected by virtual or logical links, each of
which corresponds to a path, perhaps through many physical links, in the underlying network.
For example, many peer-to-peer networks are overlay networks because they run on top of the
Internet. Internet was built as an overlay on the telephone network [6].

Overlay networks have been around since the invention of networking when computer systems
were connected over telephone lines using modem, before any data network existed.

Nowadays the Internet is the basis for many overlaid networks that can be constructed to permit
routing of messages to destinations not specified by an IP address. For example, distributed hash
tables can be used to route messages to a node having a specific logical address, whose IP
address is not known in advance.

Overlay networks have also been proposed as a way to improve Internet routing, such as through
quality of service guarantees to achieve higher-quality streaming media. Previous proposals such
as IntServ, DiffServ, and IP Multicast have not seen wide acceptance largely because they
require modification of all routers in the network. On the other hand, an overlay network can be
incrementally deployed on end-hosts running the overlay protocol software, without cooperation
from ISPs. The overlay has no control over how packets are routed in the underlying network
between two overlay nodes, but it can control, for example, the sequence of overlay nodes a
message traverses before reaching its destination.

For example, Akamai Technologies manages an overlay network that provides reliable, efficient
content delivery (a kind of multicast). Academic research includes End System Multicast and
Overcast for multicast; RON (Resilient Overlay Network) for resilient routing; and OverQoS for
quality of service guarantees, among others.

Basic hardware components

All networks are made up of basic hardware building blocks to interconnect network nodes, such
as Network Interface Cards (NICs), Bridges, Hubs, Switches, and Routers. In addition, some
method of connecting these building blocks is required, usually in the form of galvanic cable
(most commonly Category 5 cable). Less common are microwave links (as in IEEE 802.12) or
optical cable ("optical fiber").

Network interface cards

A network card, network adapter, or NIC (network interface card) is a piece of computer
hardware designed to allow computers to communicate over a computer network. It provides
physical access to a networking medium and often provides a low-level addressing system
through the use of MAC addresses.

Repeaters

A repeater is an electronic device that receives a signal, cleans it of unnecessary noise,

regenerates it, and retransmits it at a higher power level, or to the other side of an obstruction, so
that the signal can cover longer distances without degradation. In most twisted pair Ethernet
configurations, repeaters are required for cable that runs longer than 100 meters. Repeaters work
on the Physical Layer of the OSI model.

Hubs

A network hub contains multiple ports. When a packet arrives at one port, it is copied
unmodified to all ports of the hub for transmission. The destination address in the frame is not
changed to a broadcast address.[7] It works on the Physical Layer of the OSI model.

Bridges

A network bridge connects multiple network segments at the data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI
model. Bridges do send broadcasts to all ports except the one on which the broadcast was
received. However, bridges do not promiscuously copy traffic to all ports, as hubs do, but learn
which MAC addresses are reachable through specific ports. Once the bridge associates a port and
an address, it will send traffic for that address to that port only.

Bridges learn the association of ports and addresses by examining the source address of frames
that it sees on various ports. Once a frame arrives through a port, its source address is stored and
the bridge assumes that MAC address is associated with that port. The first time that a previously
unknown destination address is seen, the bridge will forward the frame to all ports other than the
one on which the frame arrived.

Bridges come in three basic types:

 Local bridges: Directly connect local area networks (LANs)

  Remote bridges: Can be used to create a wide area network (WAN) link between LANs.
Remote bridges, where the connecting link is slower than the end networks, largely have
been replaced with routers.
 Wireless bridges: Can be used to join LANs or connect remote stations to LANs.

Switches

A network switch is a device that forwards and filters OSI layer 2 datagrams (chunk of data
communication) between ports (connected cables) based on the MAC addresses in the packets.[8]
is distinct from a hub in that it only forwards the frames to the ports involved in the
communication rather than all ports connected. A switch breaks the collision domain but
represents itself as a broadcast domain. Switches make forwarding decisions of frames on the
basis of MAC addresses. A switch normally has numerous ports, facilitating a star topology for
devices, and cascading additional switches.[9] Some switches are capable of routing based on
Layer 3 addressing or additional logical levels; these are called multi-layer switches. The term
switch is used loosely in marketing to encompass devices including routers and bridges, as well
as devices that may distribute traffic on load or by application content (e.g., a Web URL
identifier).

Routers

A router is an internetworking device that forwards packets between networks by processing

information found in the datagram or packet (Internet protocol information from Layer 3 of the
OSI Model). In many situations, this information is processed in conjunction with the routing
table (also known as forwarding table). Routers use routing tables to determine what interface to
forward packets (this can include the "null" also known as the "black hole" interface because
data can go into it, however, no further processing is done for said data).