Introduction to Networks

Lecture-1
Computer Network & Communication (I)
Contents
• Introduction
• The Local Area Network
• Common Network Components
• Wide Area Network
• Network Architecture
• Physical Network Topologies

2
First Things First: What’s a Network?
• The dictionary defines the word network as “a group or system of interconnected people or
things.”
• Similarly, in the computer world, the term network means two or more connected computers
that can share resources such as data and applications, office machines, an Internet connection,
or some combination of these.

• Two hosts “talk” to each other using a computer language called binary code , which consists of
lots of 1s and 0s in a specific order that describes exactly what they want to “say.”

3
The Local Area Network
• a local area network (LAN) is usually restricted to spanning a particular geographic location such
as an office building, a single department within a corporate office, or even a home office.
• In a typical business environment, it’s a good idea to arrange your LAN’s workgroups along
department divisions.
• for instance, you would create a workgroup for Accounting, another one for Sales, and maybe
another for Marketing

4
The Local Area Network
Any device that connects to the Marketing LAN can access the resources of the Marketing LAN—in
this case, the servers and printer. There are two problems with this:
• You must be physically connected to a workgroup’s LAN to get the resources from it.
• You can’t get from one LAN to the other LAN and use its server data and printing resources
remotely.
This is a typical network issue that’s easily resolved by using a cool device called a router to connect
the two LANs

5
Common Network Components
There are a lot of different machines, devices, and media that make up our networks. Let’s talk
about three of the most common:
• Workstations
• Servers
• Hosts

6
Workstations
• Workstations are often seriously powerful computers that run more than one central processing
unit (CPU) and whose resources are available to other users on the network to access when
needed. With this much power, you might think I am describing a server—not quite because
there is an important difference between these devices that I’ll cover in the next section.
• Workstations are often employed as systems that end users use on a daily basis.
• Don’t confuse workstations with client machines, which can be workstations but not always.
• People often use the terms workstation and client interchangeably. In colloquial terms, this isn’t a
big deal; we all do it. But technically speaking, they are different.
• A client machine is any device on the network that can ask for access to resources like a printer or
other hosts from a server or powerful workstation.

7
Servers
• Servers are also powerful computers. They get their name because they truly are “at the service”
of the network and run specialized software known as the network operating system to maintain
and control the network.
• servers are highly specialized and are there to handle one important labor-intensive job.

8
Hosts
Hosts are network-connected devices that communicate over the network. They are typically end-
user devices, such as:
• Computers (desktops, laptops, tablets, etc.)
• Servers
• Printers
• Smartphones
• IoT (Internet of Things) devices

9
Wide Area Network
• WAN networks are what we use to span large geographic areas and truly go the distance.
• Like the Internet, WANs usually employ both routers and public links, so that’s generally the
criteria used to define them.
Here’s a list of some of the important ways that WANs are different from LANs:
• WANs usually need a router port or ports.
• WANs span larger geographic areas and/or can link disparate locations.
• WANs are usually slower.
• We can choose when and how long we connect to a WAN. A LAN is all or nothing— our
workstation is connected to it either permanently or not at all, although most of us have
dedicated WAN links now.
• WANs can utilize either private or public data transport media such as phone lines.

10
Wide Area Network
• We get the word Internet from the term
internetwork .
• An internetwork is a type of LAN and/or
WAN that connects a bunch of networks, or
intranets . In an internetwork, hosts still use
hardware addresses to communicate with
other hosts on the LAN. However, they use
logical addresses (IP addresses) to
communicate with hosts on a different LAN
(other side of the router).
• And routers are the devices that make this
possible. Each connection into a router is a
different logical network.

11
MPLS
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is one of the most popular WAN protocols in use today. MPLS
has become one of the most innovative and flexible networking technologies on the market, and it
has some key advantages over other WAN technologies:
• Physical layout flexibility
• Prioritizing of data
• Redundancy in case of link failure
• One-to-many connection

MPLS is a switching mechanism that imposes labels (numbers) to data and then uses those labels to
forward data when it arrives at the MPLS network
The labels are assigned on the edge of the MPLS network, and forwarding inside the MPLS network
(cloud) is done solely based on labels through virtual links instead of physical links.
Prioritizing data is a huge advantage; for example, voice data could have priority over basic data
based on the labels. And since there are multiple paths for the data to be forwarded through the
MPLS cloud, there’s even some redundancy provided as well.

12
Network Architecture: Peer-to-Peer or Client-Server?

• There are two main network types you need to know about: peer-to-peer and client-server.
• The differences between peer-to-peer and client-server architectures are pretty major. They’re
not just physical; they’re logical differences.

13
Peer-to-Peer Networks
• Computers connected together in peer-to-peer networks do not have any central, or special,
authority—they’re all peers, meaning that when it comes to authority, they’re all equals. The
authority to perform a security check for proper access rights lies with the computer that has the
desired resource being requested from it.
• It also means that the computers coexisting in a peer-to-peer network can be client machines
that access resources and server machines and provide those resources to other computers. This
actually works pretty well as long as there isn’t a huge number of users on the network, if each
user backs things up locally, and if your network doesn’t require much security.

14
Client-Server Networks
• Client-server networks are pretty much the polar opposite of peer-to-peer networks because in
them, a single server uses a network operating system for managing the whole network. Here’s
how it works: A client machine’s request for a resource goes to the main server, which responds
by handling security and directing the client to the desired resource.
• This happens instead of the request going directly to the machine with the desired resource, and
it has some serious advantages. First, because the network is much better organized and doesn’t
depend on users remembering where needed resources are, it’s a whole lot easier to find the files
you need because everything is stored in one spot—on that special server.

15
Physical Network Topologies
• It defines the specific characteristics of a network, such as where all the workstations and other
devices are located and the precise arrangement of all the physical media such as cables.
Here’s a list of the topologies you’re most likely to run into these days:
• Bus
• Star
• Ring
• Mesh
• Point-to-point
• Point-to-multipoint
• Hybrid

16
Bus Topology
• The bus topology consists of two distinct and terminated ends, with each of its computers
connecting to one unbroken cable running its entire length.
• Even though all the computers on this kind of network see all the data flowing through the cable,
only the one computer, which the data is specifically addressed to, actually gets the data.
• Some of the benefits of using a bus topology are that it’s easy to install and it’s not very
expensive, partly because it doesn’t require as much cable as the other types of physical
topologies.
• But it also has some drawbacks: For instance, it’s hard to troubleshoot, change, or move, and it
really doesn’t offer much in the way of fault tolerance because everything is connected to that
single cable. This means that any fault in the cable would basically bring the whole network
down!

17
Star Topology
• A star topology’s computers are connected to a central point with their own individual cables or
wireless connections. You’ll often find that central spot inhabited by a device like a hub, a switch,
or an access point.
• Star topology offers a lot of advantages over bus topology, making it more widely used even
though it obviously requires more physical media.
• One of its best features is that because each computer or network segment is connected to the
central device individually, if the cable fails, it only brings down the machine or network segment
related to the point of failure.
• This makes the network much more fault tolerant as well as a lot easier to troubleshoot.
• Another great thing about a star topology is that it’s a lot more scalable—all you have to do if you
want to add to it is run a new cable and connect to the machine at the core of the star.
• If that central hub happens to fail, down comes the whole network.

18
Star Topology
Here’s a list of benefits you gain by going with it:
• New stations can be added or moved easily and quickly.
• A single cable failure won’t bring down the entire network.
• It’s relatively easy to troubleshoot. And here are the disadvantages to using a star topology:
• The total installation cost can be higher because of the larger number of cables, even though
prices are becoming more competitive.
• It has a single point of failure—the hub or other central device.

19
Ring Topology
• In this type of topology, each computer is directly connected to other computers within the same
network.
• The problem is, the ring topology has a lot in common with the bus topology because if you want
to add to the network, you have no choice but to break the cable ring, which is likely to bring
down the entire network.

20
Mesh Topology
• In this type of topology, you’ll find that there’s a path from every machine to every other one in
the network.
• You won’t find it used in LANs very often, if ever, these days, but you will find a modified version
of it known as a hybrid mesh used in a restrained manner on WANs, including the Internet. Often,
hybrid mesh topology networks will have quite a few connections between certain places to
create redundancy (backup).
• You can clearly see that everything gets more and more complex as both the wiring and the
connections multiply. For each n locations or hosts, you end up with n(n–1)/2 connections. This
means that in a network consisting of only four computers, you have 4(4–1)/2, or 6 connections.

21
Point-to-Point Topology
• In a point-to-point topology you have a direct connection between two routers or switches, giving
you one communication path.

22
Point-to-Multipoint Topology
• a point-to-multipoint topology consists of a succession of connections between an interface on
one router and multiple destination routers—one point of connection to multiple points of
connection.

23
Hybrid Topology
• hybrid topology means just that—a combination of two or more types of physical or logical
network topologies working together within the same network.
• Figure 1.16 depicts a simple hybrid network topology; it shows a LAN switch or hub in a star
topology configuration that connects to its hosts via a bus topology.

24
Topology Selection, Backbones, and Segments
Selecting the Right Topology
Here’s a list of things to keep in mind when you’re faced with coming up with the right topology for
the right network:
• Cost
• Ease of installation
• Ease of maintenance
• Fault-tolerance requirement
• Security requirement

25
The Network Backbone
• Today’s networks can get complicated, so we need to have a standard way of communicating with
each other intelligibly about exactly which part of the network we’re referencing.
• This is the reason we divide networks into different parts called backbones and segments.
• The network backbone is kind of like our own. It’s what all the network segments and servers
connect to and what gives the network its structure.
• The backbone must use very fast, robust technology—often Gigabit Ethernet.

26
Network Segments
• When we refer to a segment, we can mean any small section of the network that may be
connected to, but isn’t actually a piece of, the backbone.
• The network’s workstations and servers organized into segments connect to the network
backbone, which is the common connecting point for all segments.

27
CAN & SAN
• A campus area network (CAN) refers to a network that encompasses several buildings. It
comprises the part of the network where data, services and connectivity to the outside world is
provided to those who work in the corporate office or headquarters.
• Classic Storage area networks (SANs) are comprised of high-capacity storage devices that are
connected by a high-speed private network (separate from the LAN) using a storage specific
switch. This storage information architecture addresses the collection of data, management of
data, and use of data. These networks are typically fiber networks.

28
Reference
• CompTIA-Network-Study-Guide-Exam-N10-007

29