Network Hardware

NETWORK HARDWARE
The network can be classified according to transmission technology and scale. Broadly speaking, there are two types of transmission technology that are in widespread use: broadcast links and point-to-point links.

Point-to-point links connect individual pairs of machines. To go from the source to the destination on a network made up of point-to-point links, short messages, called packets in certain contexts, may have to first visit one or more intermediate machines. Often multiple routes, of different lengths, are possible, so finding good ones is important in point-to-point networks. Point-to-point transmission with exactly one sender and exactly one receiver is sometimes called unicasting.

In contrast, on a broadcast network, the communication channel is shared by all the machines on the network; packets sent by any machine are received by allthe others. An address field within each packet specifies the intended recipient.Upon receiving a packet, a machine checks the address field. If the packet is intended for the receiving machine, that machine processes the packet; if the packetis intended for some other machine, it is just ignored.

Broadcast systems usually also allow the possibility of addressing a packet to all destinations by using a special code in the address field. When a packet with this code is transmitted, it is received and processed by every machine on the network. This mode of operation is called broadcasting. Some broadcast systems also support transmission to a subset of the machines, which known as multicasting.

An alternative criterion for classifying networks is by scale. Distance is important as a classification metric because different technologies are used at different scales.

In Figure below we classify multiple processor systems by their rough physical size. At the top are the personal area networks, networks that are meant for one person. Beyond these come longer-range networks. These can be divided into local, metropolitan, and wide area networks, each with increasing scale. Finally, the connection of two or more networks is called an internetwork. The worldwide Internet is certainly the best-known (but not the only) example of an internetwork. Soon we will have even larger internetworks with the Interplanetary Internet that connects networks across space.





















1-Personal Area Networks

PANs (Personal Area Networks) let devices communicate over the range of a person. A common example is a wireless network that connects a computer with its peripherals. Almost every computer has an attached monitor, keyboard, mouse, and printer. Without using wireless, this connection must be done with cables. So many new users have a hard time finding the right cables and plugging them into the right little holes (even though they are usually color coded) that most computer vendors offer the option of sending a technician to the user’s home to do it. To help these users, some companies got together to design a short-range wireless network called Bluetooth to connect these components without wires. The idea is that if your devices have Bluetooth, then you need no cables. You just put them down, turn them on, and they work together. For many people, this ease of operation is a big plus.

In the simplest form, Bluetooth networks use the master-slave paradigm of Figure below. The system unit (the PC) is normally the master, talking to the mouse, keyboard, etc., as slaves. The master tells the slaves what addresses to use, when they can broadcast, how long they can transmit, what frequencies they can use, and so on.





















2-Local Area Networks

A LAN (Local Area Network) is a privatelyowned network that operates within and nearby a single building. LANs are widely used to connect personal computers and consumerelectronics to let them share resources (e.g., printers) and exchange information.

Wireless LANs are very popular these days, especially in places where it is too much trouble to installcables. In these systems, every computer has a radio modem and an antenna thatit uses to communicate with other computers. In most cases, each computer talksto a device in the ceiling as shown in Figure below`. This device, called an AP(Access Point), wireless router, or base station, relays packets between thewireless computers and also between them and the Internet. There is a standard for wireless LANs called IEEE 802.11, popularly known as WiFi, which has become very widespread.

Wired LANs use a range of different transmission technologies. Most ofthem use copper wires, but some use optical fiber. LANs are restricted in size,which means that the worst-case transmission time is bounded and known in advance.The topology of many wired LANs is built from point-to-point links. IEEE802.3, popularly called Ethernet, is, by far, the most common type of wired LAN. Figure below shows a sample topology of switched Ethernet. Each computerspeaks the Ethernet protocol and connects to a box called a switch with a point-to-point link. A switch has multiple ports, each of whichcan connect to one computer. The job of the switch is to relay packets betweencomputers that are attached to it, using the address in each packet to determinewhich computer to send it to.

3-Metropolitan Area Networks
A MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) covers a city. The best-known examples of MANs are the cable television networks available in many cities. These systems grew from earlier community antenna systems used in areas withpoor over-the-air television reception. In those early systems, a large antenna wasplaced on top of a nearby hill and a signal was then piped to the subscribers’houses.Cable television is not the only MAN, though. Recent developments in high-speedwireless Internet access have resulted in another MAN, which has beenstandardized as IEEE 802.16 and is popularly known as WiMAX.
















4-Wide Area Networks
A WAN (Wide Area Network) spans a large geographical area, often acountry or continent. We will begin our discussion with wired WANs, using theexample of a company with branch offices in different cities.The WAN in Figurebelow is a network that connects offices in Perth, Melbourne,and Brisbane. Each of these offices contains computers intended for running user (i.e., application) programs. We will follow traditional usage and call these machineshosts. The rest of the network that connects these hosts is then called thecommunication subnet, or just subnet for short. The job of the subnet is to carrymessages from host to host; just as the telephone system carries words (really justsounds) from speaker to listener.

In most WANs, the subnet consists of two distinct components: transmissionlines and switching elements. Transmission lines move bits between machines.They can be made of copper wire, optical fiber, or even radio links. Most companiesdo not have transmission lines lying about, so instead they lease the linesfrom a telecommunications company. Switching elements, or just switches, arespecialized computers that connect two or more transmission lines. When dataarrive on an incoming line, the switching element must choose an outgoing line onwhich to forward them. These switching computers have been called by variousnames in the past; the name router is now most commonly used. Unfortunately,some people pronounce it ‘‘rooter’’ while others have it rhyme with ‘‘doubter.’’



5-Internetworks
Many networks exist in the world, often with different hardware and software.People connected to one network often want to communicate with people attachedto a different one. The fulfillment of this desire requires that different, and frequentlyincompatible, networks be connected. A collection of interconnected networksis called an internetwork or internet. The Internet uses ISP networks to connect enterprisenetworks, home networks, and many other networks.

Subnets, networks, and internetworks are often confused. The term ‘‘subnet’’makes the most sense in the context of a wide area network, where it refers to thecollection of routers and communication lines owned by the network operator. Asan analogy, the telephone system consists of telephone switching offices connectedto one another by high-speed lines, and to houses and businesses by low-speedlines. These lines and equipment, owned and managed by the telephone company,form the subnet of the telephone system. The telephones themselves (thehosts in this analogy) are not part of the subnet.A network is formed by the combination of a subnet and its hosts. However,the word ‘‘network’’ is often used in a loose sense as well. We know that an internetis formed when distinct networks are interconnected. In our view, connectinga LAN and a WAN or connecting two LANs is the usual way to form an internetwork,but there is little agreement in the industry over terminology in this area.

There are two rules of thumb that are useful. First, if different organizations havepaid to construct different parts of the network and each maintains its part, wehave an internetwork rather than a single network. Second, if the underlying technologyis different in different parts (e.g., broadcast versus point-to-point andwired versus wireless), we probably have an internetwork.