On the 14th day of A2Z Challenge 2019, I shall talk about a very important topic – Networking. In this post, I am going to talk about the A2Z of networking. In computer science, networking is the practice of exchanging data over a medium. The process of exchanging data between a source and a receiver is also called Data communication. The device that transmits data is known as the source and the device that receives the data is called the receiver. A data communication system has the following components:
- Message: This is the data or the information to be communicated. It may contain text, audio/visual or both.
- Sender: It is the device that generates and sends the message.
- Receiver: It is the device that receives the message.
- Medium: It is the path between the sender and the receiver.
- Protocol: It is the set of rules that govern the communication between the devices. Both the sender and the receiver must follow the same protocol to communicate with each other.
A2Z of Networking – Transmission Media
Transmission media is the physical path through which the message is transmitted from the sender to the receiver. There are two types of transmission media: Guided and Unguided.
Guided Media consists of:
- Twisted Pair Cable: There are two types of twisted pair cables:
- Unshielded Twisted Pair – Used in setting up LAN and telephone connections
- Shielded Twisted Pair cable
- Coaxial Cable – Used in setting up DTH connection
- Fibre Optics – Used in setting up Fibre connections to provide high-speed internet services.
- Satellite Communication
- Radio Transmission
- Microwave
A2Z of Networking – Types of Network
A computer network is a system for communicating between two or more computers. Computer networks can be classified according to their size:
- Local Area Network (LAN) connects computers in a single building, block or campus.
- Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is a bigger version of LAN as it generally covers towns and cities.
- Wide Area Network (WAN) is a bigger version of WAN as it covers a large geographical area (states, countries, continents).