People An Understanding About Computer Networks example essay topic

INTRODUCTION TO NETWORKING Basic Introduction to Networking Mike Slot aBus 361 Abstract One problem seen with people today is that they are unaware what of a computer network is. They might have heard of a computer network, but they are clueless as to how it works or why it works. People have basic questions that need to be answered. The goal of this paper is to give basic network information that will hopefully answer those questions. To give people an understanding about computer networks there are several areas that we must discuss. Definitions of some network nomenclature will be provided.

Many people may have heard or seen these words, but never knew what they meant. Another part that is important is the history of networking. By giving a brief history of networking, this will give the reader a good foundation on which to start on. They need to know how networking came around and why it is such a big part of our lives today.

Also, explained is why it is important to understand networking. The hardware or physical attributes of a network are also in this paper. There is a lot of confusing hardware in a network, but it is relatively simple. Finally, everything will be tied together to explain how the network works. People need to know what a word means when they see it. In the appendix are a few terms that will be in this paper as well as several other important ones.

After you are familiar with these terms we will proceed to discuss the history of networking. Explanations will be provided on how networking came about and who was the first to experiment with it. Also, some statistics about the Internet and its growth will be discussed. In the 1950's, there was no interaction between the users and their programs while they were running on the computers. No direct communications were involved. Jobs were brought to the machine to be run in a batch.

(Jones, 2001, Personal Computers History and Development) "In the 1960's, time-sharing brought about the first interactive access to computers. This was a mix of data transmission technology and a teletypewriter. The result was an interactive terminal. These terminals were connected to a server with low-speed lines, allowing the users to interact with the computer and take advantage of its resources. Time-sharing gave multiple users the ability to use the computer at the same time, for completely separate tasks, and provided them with interactive feedback about what their programs were doing. Demand for the services of these large computers increased which meant upgrades had to be made frequently to keep the processing power ahead of the user need.

These systems, called Mainframes, had been designed to provide computing power, but did not have the flexibility to satisfy the growing set of applications". (Jones, 2001, Personal Computers History and Development) Also, in the 1960's the military used networks to communicate to one another. It worked like the time-sharing network. They needed this network to communicate between cities, bases, and states.

"There was also a concern about a nuclear war. If there was a nuclear war how would people communicate? There needed to be a network that would be able to work after a nuclear strike. They came up with a 'hot potato network. Basically the information would be tossed like a hot potato from user to user until it reached its destination. The actual route it took was not important.

This meant that if big parts of the network were destroyed the message would try another route. It becomes apparent this was not as efficient compared to the traditional telephone system". (Jones, 2001, Personal Computers History and Development) During the 1970's and 1980's, networking was continuously being upgraded. Businesses, schools, and the government needed faster networking capabilities to handle all the people that were using the basic 'time-sharing' network. "In 1975, the first personal computer was marketed in kit form. This computer was called the Altair.

The Altair features 256 bytes (not megabytes) of memory". (Jones, 2001 Personal Computers History and Development) Bill Gates, along with others, wrote a BASIC program for the machine so it could perform small tasks. The next year Apple began to market its PC's, also in kit form. It included a monitor and a keyboard. (Jones, 2001. BASIC - Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code).

During the next few years the personal computer gained the interests of many people. Microsoft, Apple, and many smaller PC related companies formed. By 1977 stores begin to sell PC's. Continuing today, companies compete to reduce the size and price of PC's while increasing capacity. IBM introduced its PC in 1981. The Internet as we know today as the Information Superhighway was introduced in 1989.

It was formed through a long chain of networks. It was a lot smaller back then. There were only a handful of people that had a computer, and some of these people were not familiar with a modem. In 1989 the Internet had about 3900 domains and 130,000 hosts.

Today there 175 million users in North America alone. In reality the Internet formed through the formation of the ARPANET or the Advanced Research Project Agency. "The physical network was constructed in 1969, linking four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The network was wired together via 50 Kbps circuits. The ARPANET was the first stage of networking. (History of the Internet, 2001) This early network was the start of the Internet.

It is evident that ever since networking was first introduced people have been constantly trying to improve it and make it faster. This is going to continue for thousands of years. It is important to understand that networking plays an important part in your life. Networking does a lot of your banking, whether it is electronic banking, which is obviously done through a network, to an ATM machine, which is connected to a network.

When you insert your ATM card or credit card to withdraw money, the ATM is checking to see if you have enough funds available. It does this by sending information to your credit card bank or your local bank. It then confirms that there is money in your account and out comes your money. What people might not understand is that when they get a loan it is done by a computer network. Most all banks nowadays use DSS systems to determine the credit worthiness of borrowers. Cash is not sent to the person from whom you bought the product, the banks connect to one another and your lender sends them the money in the form of electronic cash.

A network is made up of several pieces of hardware. Each piece of hardware plays an important role in the network. There are 5 basic pieces of hardware that are in a LAN (local area network) and WAN (wide area network). Both LAN's and WAN's have network cards, hubs, cable, and a server. A WAN has one more thing than a LAN. This is a router.

In the next section of the paper how all this hardware works will be explained. I in order to explain how everything works, people must know what is being discussed. The network card is installed on a computer that wishes to be connected to a LAN or a WAN. After it is connected it allows a connection to a hub and then data can be shared among several computers. Hubs work directly with a network card. If a computer has a network card plugged into it, then cable can be run from the hub to the card.

This will make the sharing of data between two or more computers possible. This hub typically has 8 ports on it. That means that it is possible to connect up to 8 computers.