Vanessa's Web Technology Blog: Chapter 6

In chapter six I learned about networks and how they work. There are three kinds of networks they are, Local Area Networks, Metropolitan Networks, and Wide Area Networks. In a Local Area Network, a small group of computers in the same area are connected to the same network. Anything that is connected to the Local Area Network is called a node. Every node in a network has its own address, it is called a MAC address. A computer is an example of a node. If you just want to connect a few computers you would use peer-to-peer LAN. Each computer or device that you want to connect to the peer-to-peer network needs to have a network interface card. All of the nodes in the same network are connected by a device called a hub. If you want to connect multiple computers and devices you would use a client server network. In a Client Server Network uses a network operating system. Multiple places in a city are connected by a Metropolitan Area Network. Some of the buildings connected to a Metropolitan Area Network are educational and government facilitates. Wide Area Networks cover a wide range of networks. The LAN typology is made up of the bus, ring, and star typology. The access methods that are used in a network are ethernet and token ring. Transmission media is what is used to transfer information in a network. Coaxial cables, twisted-pair cables, and fiber optic cables can be used to transfer information. Information can also be transmitted through infrared and radio frequency transmissions. There are some wireless devices use a transceiver to get radio frequency transmissions. Bluetooth devices and Wireless Area Networks use radio frequency transmissions. The hard ware and software devices that are for connecting devices to a network are, hubs, bridges, data switches, routers and gateways. There are passive hubs and intelligent hubs. An intelligent hub can do a lot more than a passive hub. An intelligent hub can filter out information. A bridge has the ability to connect two things in the same network or two things from a different network. A data switch has multiple ports. A router directs packets by using a static routing and dynamic routing. A hop is when a packet gets sent to the next to another router. The tracert utility is used to trace a hop. Gateways are hard ware or software devices that can translate and forward packets. Network Service Providers provide Internet Service Providers with the Internet service. The network access point is where the networks connect to the Internet.