Introduction to computer networks

UNDERSTANDING NETWORKS
Human Networks

A network consists of two or more entities, or objects, sharing resources and

information.
There are networks that don’t involve computers, and those networks are
everywhere. You have grown accustomed to working with them, possibly
without even knowing it.

It may not matter to you that, in a basic sense, sharing (giving or getting) is a
fundamental aspect of networking. You just know that you do it.
 Family Network

Most people belong to a family network in which related

people share their resources and information. This sharing is
bi-directional because even the youngest family members
share information of some sort. As the family grows, so does
the network.
 Peer Network

Outside the family, there is a community that offers a wider array of re- sources than
the typical family can provide.
Naturally, it makes sense to connect the family to this community to take advantage
of the wealth of re- sources available around town.
This type of information/resource sharing can be as simple as loaning a hammer to a
neighbor, car-pooling with work associates, or helping a friend with his or her
homework.
All of these activi ties involve sharing, or trading, resources.
This kind of network is represented by a two-way relationship, a give and take
among equals or peers.
The family network connects with the greater community.
 Restaurant Network:

The Client and the Server

In any type of human network, there’s a lot of giving and taking.
You’re already more accustomed to the client/server perspective in
networking than you realize.
For instance, when you go to dinner at a restaurant, you become a
customer, or client, enjoying the food and drink prepared and served to you
by the restaurant.
On the other hand, the waiter works as a server, controlling and providing
his customers with access to resources in the form of placing orders for
and delivering food items. The server knows that re- quests will be made
of him (access is sought when an order is placed) and that he will service
those making the requests (access is granted when the order is delivered).
In a dining situation, it is easy to know whether you are supposed to
be serving or being served.
 Contact Network
Anyone who has looked for a job knows that one of the best ways to find
a job is to network.
That is, create a list of friends and associates who will help you find the
perfect job. The more people you meet and get to know, the better your
chances of obtaining work.
As you develop and nurture your career, this contact network will serve
you best because your role in it will change as you gain more experience.
Soon, you may be able to help the people who helped you. And as your
personal and professional networks grow, so do your opportunities.

These examples of human networks should help you understand that

networking is common between people and is not just an activity
restricted to computers. However, we will focus on computer networks—
connecting computers and having them communicate with each other.
The more people in your network, the better your chances of
finding that perfect job.
 Computer Networks

A computer network consists of two or more computing

devices that are connected in order to share the components of
your network (its resources) and the information you store there,
as shown in Figure 1.
The most basic computer network (which consists of just two
connected computers) can expand and become more usable
when additional computers join and add their resources to those
being shared.
A computer network can be as simple as two or more computers
communicating.
 Computer network
The first computer, yours, is commonly referred to as your local
computer.

It is more likely to be used as a location where you do work,

a workstation, than as a storage or controlling location, a server.

As more and more computers are connected to a network and share

their resources, the net- work becomes a more powerful tool, because
employees using a network with more information and more
capability are able to accomplish more through those added computers
or additional resources.
 Network Plan
Networking computers first and tracking the connections later can quickly become confusing and
unmanageable as you try to find which computer communicates with and shares resources with which other
computers.
example,
In your human network, do you share everything with your friends?
In your family network, would you want your parents or guardians to know your every thought?
You have your information-sharing plan in your head, and it is important to keep track of it so you don’t make
a mistake and share something where it was not intended.

Similar concerns must be considered while designing a computer network.

Before you even connect your first computers together, you should have a plan.
A network plan, therefore, is a formally created product that shows all the network’s components and the
planned connections between them.
Such a plan is also used to manage the various types of information. Your plan should show what types of
information are stored where, and who is allowed to use each type.
 Information Management
Your network plan should help you manage the information gathered, stored, and shared between your users.
If you were given an empty three-drawer filing cabinet and told to use it to organize your company’s information, you
would have an excellent (although manual) example of a filing system that needs a plan.
Having an overall guide that tells you who will be allowed access to the three drawers will help determine what you store
in each one.
Once you have that part of the plan, you could put the least-used information in the bottom drawer, the more-used in the
middle drawer, and the most-used in the top drawer so that it is easier for your users to access their information.
Knowing who needs to know what, and who does not need to know what—lets you determine whether to lock a particular
drawer, too.

Even when we discuss implementing a three-drawer manual filing sys- tem, the importance of having a network plan ahead
of time becomes evi- dent. If you put the limited-access material in a drawer open to all employees, how do you keep it
secure? Additional security measures (like adding a lock to a drawer, or moving the secure information somewhere else)
may be required later.
 Information management
A networking plan could tell you that specific types of
sensitive data (like medical, personal, or payroll information)
are gathered or grouped, they should be stored higher in the
hierarchical structure (ranked from most sensitive to least
sensitive), and this can save you time in the end.
That plan should specify that the access requirements are
stricter for sensitive data and reduce the number of people able
to use specific types of information.
 Information’s Importance

Some information is more important or more sensitive than the rest.

It is usually obvious in real filing cabinet systems, because the top drawer is usually where the
most sensitive information is stored, and it is locked. Few people in an organization have access
to that information. For example, credit card or Social Security numbers are information that
should be given the highest level of security—access to that information is given only to a
limited number of people in a company.
On the other hand, some information, such as Webpages, newsletters, and product information,
is created for everyone to see, even outside a company. Figure 3 shows how this kind of
information is organized into a hierarchy of information, where the most detailed information is
found at the top and the more general, less secure information is located at the bottom.
How much information would you be willing to provide about yourself to a perfect stranger?
Country of birth? That’s okey. State of residence? Why not? But you might have second thoughts
about advertising your street address or phone number to a stranger.
 Information’s Importance
The collection and proper manipulation of many pieces of information,
and the effective tracking of them, makes information management on
networks so important, just as when you are maintaining a manual filing
system.
A single piece of information in a data field, such as your first name,
can seem unimportant. However, by combining your first name with
other pieces of related information, like your last name, address, age,
gender, and phone number (stored in other data fields), the pieces can be
put together to create a data record, which can accurately describe
something (or someone). Finally, combining similar records (such as
records describing all your classmates) creates a file that contains
sensitive information from more than one source, this is more sensitive
than a single record.
 Information’s Importance

Information sharing, therefore, has serious security issues to

be considered, and network access to data must be evaluated
carefully so that only those who need it can access it.
 Introduction to benefits of Networks

In the early days of the personal computer (PC), during the late ’70s and
early ’80s, often a PC was used as a stand-alone computer and operated
independently from other computers.
over the span of just those few years, their use increased and more PCs
were found relatively close to each other, users began sharing
information.
The information was either printed out or copied from one computer to
another using backup or storage devices, such as tapes, disks, or other
digital storage media.
The printout or the storage device was then physically carried to another
computer where the information was reentered or copied from the
portable media into the next computer.
This process was referred to as a sneakernet because users actually had
to walk from computer to computer.
 Disadvantages of sneakernet

Distances between computers were large

The information may be needed to be shared among many computers.
The printouts were often bulky
The storage devices could hold a relatively small amount of data
compared to the large amount of output users produced.
 benefits of Networks
 Sharing Information
The initial reason for developing most computer networks was to assist users with
sharing their increased output, especially between computers in the same general
vicinity.
However, users wanted not only to share information with others, they wanted to
communicate about that information after someone else had it, too. In addition to
transmitting the user’s original information, computer networks enabled those users to
discuss what was being transmitted, and this resulted in even more communication.
Additional network communications techniques thus came into being, such as e-mail
and video conferencing.
with the increases in the sizes of networks, sharing no longer had to be concerned
with proximity.
The use of networks has effectively erased distance and time constraints.
Networks are an effective way to communicate.
benefits of Networks
Sharing Information

Using networks, companies can send the same

information to large numbers of employees or
customers quickly and efficiently.
Examples include
company newsletters
announcements for employee
advertisements etc.
Also, individual employees are more likely to
communicate with larger numbers of individuals both
inside and outside the company using e-mail.
Benefit of Networks
 Sharing Resources
• In the sneakernet era, users spent huge amounts of time attempting to share their resources.
• They had to physically distribute files that others needed.
• Expenditures for printers and other attached computer components rose rapidly while the
individual components themselves were not being used to their full capacity.
• On top of that, the hard disk storage on each local computer began filling up, partly because
everyone had a copy of every document.
however
• One copy of that data, and even the applications that produced it, could more efficiently be
stored in a single location and shared over a network.
• The ability to share resources was another reason networks were created, and it is still one of
the main purposes for using networks.
• The inevitable technology creep extends the computer user’s involvement in technology
because companies expect employees to learn new systems as they are installed.
• Companies also look for ways to make the best use of their investments by sharing the
purchased resources among multiple departments.
some of the resources that are commonly shared over computer
networks.
 Peripherals
The ability to share printers was very often enough of a cost savings for companies to invest
in implementing and supporting a simple network.
The company could then also realize additional cost savings as it shared additional
peripheral devices, such as faxes, modems, scanners and plotters.
Sharing peripherals often ends up producing significant cost savings and more than justifies
the expense of adding a network.
 Storage
Data was being loaded on the computers of every user as they expanded their network use.
Users quickly ran out of space on their own local computers, so the people in charge of the
networks began devising ways to store data centrally so that it was accessible to any user
who needed it.
Large amounts of storage capacity, usually in fast, very powerful computers, were set up to
act as storage locations for this data where access to it could be controlled by the person
storing the data.
some of the resources that are commonly shared over computer
networks.
 Applications
Cost and space savings are achieved when computer users can centrally store their
software applications.
Applications, such as those used for preparing taxes, creating text documents, or
playing computer games, have grown in complexity and size and often take up
considerable local storage.
Installing an application once on a network and then sharing it cuts down on the
storage space required when multiple users need the same application.
Unfortunately, there are still several problems with this type of arrangement.
Some applications work fine with different setups for each user (different choices
for screen settings and other custom features), but normally all such settings must
be the same for all users.
Sometimes, applications still function better when installed on a user’s local
computer.
Benefit of Networks
Assisting Collaboration
Once you have digital information and the ability to share it instantly
with others over networks, you can have multiple people working on the
same process collectively.
coworkers can discuss each other’s work or possibly even exchanging
opinions about what other users had created.
Those early computer users found that once they created something and
sent it out for review, the comments returned often led to important
adjustments that would improve the original product.
Such collaboration assisted the widespread use of computers because it
provided a tangible benefit that businesses could associate with the
increased costs of installing computers in the first place.
Benefit of Networks
Facilitating Centralized Management
 Managing Software
Using the network helped reduce software costs.
Savings occurred when all users on a network used the same software and when software
was bought in bulk quantities for a discount.
Centralizing the installation of that software also reduced operation costs because the
installations could be accomplished remotely—over the network.
The computer programs that were needed were stored on servers and made accessible over
the network.
The maintenance personnel would then simply log on to the network from a client computer
and install the needed applications using the installation software stored on the server.
Within the past few years, even more savings have been achieved by having the centralized
server initiate the software installations or updates on the client computers without the need
for maintenance personnel to actually visit any of the clients.
 Benefit of Networks

Facilitating Centralized Management

 Maintaining the Network
Purchasing similar equipment for use on the network meant that network
maintenance costs were reduced because there were fewer dissimilar components.
Maintenance workers no longer had to attend numerous training sessions on many
different components, which meant they could spend more time maintaining the
actual components.
 Backing Up Data
A network minimizes the time spent backing up of necessary files.
In the event of a hardware or software failure that causes information or applications
to be lost, vital information and necessary applications can be restored if sufficient
backups exist.
The backup process is normally a regular activity in a company.
Disadvantages of networking
 It comes with the risk of security issues.
Considering the large number of people using a computer network
and sharing files and resources, your security would normally be at
risk. As you can see, there are illegal activities on a network,
especially on the web, which you need to be aware and careful of.
 It encourages people to become dependent on computers.
Since this technology’s process mostly involves the use of computers,
people have been relying on these machines rather than exerting some
physical effort, which can be bad health wise.
 It opens up a doorway for computer viruses and malware.
There will be cases where you would unknowingly store some
corrupted files into your computer that can destroy your entire
operating system. However, you can always use anti-virus software to
keep this situation from happening.
Disadvantages of networking
 Cost of network
The expense of executing the system including cabling and equipment can be expensive.
 It lacks robustness.
if a computer network’s main server breaks down, the entire system would become useless.
Also, if it has a bridging device or a central linking server that fails, the entire network would
also come to a standstill. To deal with these problems, huge networks should have a powerful
computer to serve as file server to make setting up and maintaining the network easier.
 It requires an efficient handler.
For a computer network to work efficiently and optimally, it requires high technical skills and
know-how of its operations and administration.
A person just having basic skills cannot do this job. Take note that the responsibility to handle
such a system is high, as allotting permissions and passwords can be overwhelming.
Similarly, network configuration and connection is very tedious and cannot be done by an
average technician who does not have advanced knowledge.
Activity
Question 1
Assume that you are a computer technician in the department of computer
science. Make out a purchase order requesting that a new training lab (lab 4) in the
department be joined to the network. Fully explain on your purchase order why it
is necessary to join this new lab to the network and what existing components the
lab will rely upon once it is connected.
Question 2
Ricky is still out there helping Lauren enlist the cooperation of the SinkRSwim Pools
workers by having them become network users. Help him come up with convincing
arguments that will make those workers want to join their new workstations to the
network as soon as they take delivery. Remember, they are computer novices and
do not yet have access to their computers, and don’t forget to be convincing.