Networking Devices
Networking Devices
DEVICES
NETWORKING DEVICES
• Network devices are the devices used for organizing a network, connecting to a network, routing the packets,
strengthening the signals, communicating with others.
• Network Interface Card (NIC)
• Modem
• Hub
• Repeaters
• Wireless Access Point (AP)
• Switch
• Router
• Bridge
• Gateway
NETWORK INTERFACE CARD (NIC)
• It’s a plastic circuit board that have several computer chips that process signals from the
network and the PC.
• A hardware component that connects your computer to a local data network or the Internet.
• Provides an interface onto a network (usually a LAN) for a computer system.
• It uses 48 bit MAC address and is a physical layer device.
• The NIC has RJ45 socket where network cable is physically plugged in.
• The earliest Ethernet cards were external to the system and needed to be installed manually.
NETWORK INTERFACE CARD (NIC)
MODEM
• Modem is short for Modulator / Demodulator.
• It converts or modulates an analog signal from a telephone or cable wire to a digital signal that a
computer can recognize.
• Similarly, it converts outgoing digital data from a computer or other device to an analog signal.
Dial-up Modems
• The first modems were dial-up meaning they had to dial a phone number to connect to an ISP.
• These modems operated over standard analog phone lines and used the same frequencies as
telephone calls, which limited their maximum data transfer rate to 56 Kbps.
• Dial-up modems also required full use of the local telephone line, meaning voice calls would interrupt
the Internet connection.
MODEM
DSL Modem
• Modern modems are typically DSL or cable modems, which are considered broadband devices.
• DSL modems operate over standard telephone lines, but use a wider frequency range of 128 kbps.
• This allows for higher data transfer rates than dialup modems and enables them to not interfere with
phone calls.
HUB
• Passive Hub
• Simply connects all the devices together.
• Active Hub
• It amplifies the signals before it broadcasts it to other
devices.
REPRESENTATION OF DEVICES
REPEATERS
• They not only repeats the signal received but also reads the actual information in the message.
• The message contains source and destination MAC addresses which are reads by the switch.
• Switch maintains a Switch Table which keeps track of which device is connected to which port.
• A LAN switch operates at the data link layer or the network layer of the OSI Model.
• A gateway, as the name suggests, is a passage to connect two networks together that may work
upon different networking models.
• It uses packet transmission.
• It operates on 3rd layer of OSI model.
• They basically works as the messenger agents that take data from one system, interpret it, and transfer
it to another system.
• All data routed inward or outward must first pass through and communicate with the gateway in order
to use routing paths.
• Gateways are also called protocol converters.