Basic Networking Concepts Beginners Guide

Today computer networks are everywhere.

You will find them in homes, offices, factories, hospitals leisure centres etc.

But how are they created? What technologies do they use?

In this tutorial you will learn the basic networking technologies, terms and concepts
used in all types of networks both wired and wireless, home and office.

Home and Office Networks

The network you have at home uses the same networking technologies, protocols
and services that are used in large corporate networks and on the Internet.

The only real difference between an home network and a large corporate network is
the size.

A home network will have between 1 and 20 devices and a corporate network will
have many thousands.

If you are completely new to networking then the basic course  will introduce you to
the basic networking protocols used in small home/office networks and on the
Internet.

Setting Up and building a Home Network will introduce some basic networking

component and show you how to build a home network and connect it to the
Internet.

Networking Types and Structures

Networks can be wired or wireless with most networks being a mixture of both.

Wired vs Wireless Networks

Early (pre 2008) networks were predominately wired.

Today however most networks will use a mixture of wired and wireless network.
 Wired networks use Ethernet as the data link protocol. This is unlikely to change with
the IOT, as IOT devices will be predominantly wireless.

Wired Networks- Advantages and Disadvantages

Wired networks have the following advantages/disadvantages:

Advantages:

 Ethernet ports are found on almost all laptops/PCs and netbooks even on
those 8 years old.
 Wired networks are faster than Wireless. Data rates were periodically
increased from the original 10 megabits per second, to 1gigabits per second. Most
home networks use 10-100Mbps.
 More secure than Wireless

Disadvantages

 Need to Use cable which can be unsightly, difficult to run and expensive.
 Can’t be used easily between buildings (planning etc).
 Note a new technology that uses mains cable overcomes many of these
disadvantages. powerline networking is common on home/small office networks
 Not supported on Mobile phones and tablets.

Wireless Networks – Advantages and Disadvantages

Wireless networks use Wi-fi as the data link protocol. However other wireless
options are being developed for the IOT (Internet of things). See Wireless networking
Technologies for the IOT

Wireless Networks have the following advantages/disadvantages:

Advantages

 Generally easier to set up.

 Can be used both on home and public networks
 No cables required.
 Can be used with mobile phones and tablets.

Wireless Networks Disadvantages

 Generally Slower than wired networks.

 Limited by range.
 Open to eavesdropping.
 Not as secure depending on set up.

Networking Topologies and Layout

 There are many different ways network nodes can be connected together. This isn’t
normally a consideration in small networks but has networks get larger it becomes
more important.

There are many different ways network nodes can be connected

together.

Common connection technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth etc are designed to work
using a particular network topology.

When designing networks and choosing connection protocols having an

understanding of these topologies is important.

Common are:

 Bus
 Ring
 Mesh
 Star
 Hybrid

Each of these topologies has advantages and disadvantages this Network

topologies article has a really good overview of each topology along with advantages
and disadvantages.

Early Ethernet networks used a bus structure, modern Ethernet networks and Wi-Fi
Networks. use a star bus (hybrid) structure.

However both Wi-Fi and bluetooth are being upgraded to support mesh networking.

Networking Topology- Physical vs Logical

How the nodes on a network communicate with each other can be very different to
how they are physically interconnected.

Most Home and small office networks use a physical bus topology.

Common logical typologies are Peer to Peer and Client Server.

 The web (WWW) is a client server network at the logical level.

Peer to Peer and Client Server Networking

Peer to Peer

in a peer to peer network all nodes are equal and any node can talk to any other
node.

No node has any special role. This was the original networking model of windows
networking. (windows for Workgroups)- Diagram below:

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages:

 Easier to setup
 Not dependent on a single node
 More resilient
 Better distribution of network traffic
 No central administrator required
 Less expensive hardware required

Disadvantages:
 Less secure and more difficult to secure
 More difficult to administer
 More difficult to backup
 More difficult to locate information.

This was the original networking model used in early Windows networks (windows
for Workgroups)

A Modern example of Peer to Peer networking is BitTorrent.

Although this networking model isn’t currently popular it could become more popular
with the Internet of things (IOT).

Client Server

In a Client Server network a server has a special role e.g file server, domain

controller, web server etc.

A client connects to a server to use the appropriate services.

This is the networking model used on the web and the Internet and on modern large
Windows networks.-Diagram below:

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages:
 Easy to find resources as they are on a dedicated node i.e. A server
 Easy to secure
 Easy to administer
 Easy to backup

Disadvantages:

 Servers are a single point of failure

 Expensive hardware required
 Network traffic get concentrated

A Modern example of Client Server networking is the Web.

Facebook,Twitter,Google search and many other web services use this networking
model.

Network Size

Networks vary considerably in size.The following are commonly used terms:

 PAN -Personal Area Network – Linking local devices e,g, PC to printer

 LAN – Local Area network- links devices in an office or offices
 MAN – Metropolitan Area network – links devices across multiple buildings
like a campus
 WAN – Wide area network – links devices across a country/countries.

Networking Levels and Layers and Protocols

A protocol defines a set of rules that govern how computers talk to each other.

Ethernet and Wi-Fi are Data link protocols that are responsible for framing data on
the media (cable or wireless).

They can be used for carrying higher level protocols (IP etc)..

Ethernet and Wi-Fi use a physical level address know as the MAC address which
is 48 bits.

EUI 64 addresses are MAC addresses with 64 bits will replace MAC addresses on
IPV6, 6LoWPAN, ZigBee and other new network protocols. See this Wiki for details.

You can divide networking into distinct levels or layers.

Each level or layer is responsible for a particular function.

The OSI uses a 7 layer model and TCP/IP networks use a 4 layer model.
 Because TCP/IP networks are the most common the TCP/IP model is the most
important one to understand. The levels are:

 Data link level – e.g. Ethernet, Wi-Fi

 Networking e.g. IP, – IPv4 Address classes and subnetting and IPv6
Explained for Beginners.
 Transport level e.g.TCP, UDP – See TCP vs UDP
 Application level – e.g. HTTP -See HTTP for beginners

See Understanding the TCP/IP protocol suite and TCP port and sockets for details.

Network Addressing
What Is An IP Address?

Every device attached to a network, and the Internet has an IP address.

An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each

device (e.g., computer, printer) participating in a computer network that uses
the Internet Protocol for communication –WikI

There are two versions of IP, they are IPv4 and IPv6.

IPv4 has been in use since the start of the Internet, and is deployed across the
Internet, and home/corporate networks.

IPv4 uses 32 bits for addressing, however due to the rapid growth of the Internet, all
IPv4 addresses have been allocated (as of 2013).

Techniques like NAT (network Address Translation) have extended the life of IPv4

by allowing the use of private IP addresses inside networks.

However IPv4 will eventually be replaced by IPV6 which uses 128 bits for the

address, and so can accommodate many more hosts (computers/devices)
The roll out of IPv6 across the Internet is happening slowly, and IPv4 will be with us
for many years to come especially in home and small office networks.

As IP6 rolls out they will also be a need to operate with two addresses until migration
is complete, and IP4 is discontinued.

IP addresses are logical addresses, and are assigned by a network administrator or

can be auto assigned ( using DHCP).–

The important thing to note is that the IP address of a device isn’t fixed.

Public and Private IP Addresses

Both IPv4 and IPV6 have both public and private address ranges.

The private addresses are used for home/business networks and the addresses

aren’t routeable on the Internet i.e. they don’t travel across the internet.

For IP4 the private addresses starts with

10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x or 172.16.x.x

Public addresses are reachable from anywhere on the internet and are routeable.

See Internal and external IP addresses for more details

IP Address Assignment

Most modern networks use automatic IP address assignment via DHCP with manual

assignment only being done in special cases.
 For home networks the Internet router or hub usually provides DHCP services for the
network.

For larger networks a dedicated DHCP server is normally used.

Most windows machines will auto assign their own address if they fail to find a DHCP
server.

This can cause problems see troubleshooting Internet connections.

IP Addresses and Domain Names

Computers use numbers (IP addresses ) but people use names as they are much
easier to remember.

When you type in a domain name into your web browser the name is translated into
an IP address by a DNS server usually located on the Internet.

Your computer will resolve the name using a name resolving process. See

 Resolving Host names to IP addresses

 DNS lookups Explained
 Understanding DNS
 The DNS structure explained
 DNS Zones Explained
 Understanding the Hosts File

Other Networking Tutorials

 Understanding Binary numbers for Beginners

 TCP vs UDP – What is the Difference?
 Beginners guide to using nslookup

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