Group06_Bandwidth Brothers: Understanding Computer Networks

1. Networking is a practice of linking various devices together with necessary hardware and software so as to facilitate communications between them. If the devices are computers, then it is called computer networking. Mostly data is transmitted or received between them. The technologies used to transmit can be broadly classified as Wired and Wireless. Wired includes popular technologies such as Telephone Cables, Ethernet Cables, Optical Fibres etc. Wireless includes Bluetooth, Infrared, Wifi, Wimax, 3G, gsm, gprs etc. Most popular type of computer networks are LAN,WAN,VPN and Internet. However there are other computer networks such as CAN,MAN,etc. Finally we need basic hardware equipments such as Network Interface Cards (NICs), bridges, hubs, switches and routers in order to facilitate computer networking. Data is transmitted between the computers through wires.
2. Internet is considered as "baap" of all computer networks. In this network, all the computers participating have a unique address(such as the unique home address) known as IP (Internet Protocol) Adressses. This uniquely naming all the computers using numbers or hexadecimal chareters forms the basic stage in TCP/IP (the language with which the computers in Internet talk). It all happens when you order an internet connection to your home. The ISP (Airtel or BSNL) will provide you with the basic CPE(Consumer Premise Equipment) which will help you to connect to the Internet. When you type in a web address and hit enter in the browser, your request gets processed and sent into the DNS server which maintains the lookup tables for each web address. This lookup tables will then search for your entry and then the IP address will be retreived and the DNS server will then send a request to that web address. The information received from the web address will be forwarded to the client who requested that web address page. This is the general procedure followed while retreiving a world wide web address. There are many other protocols which use internet as the transmitting medium such a IRC, HTTP, FTP, Bittorrent etc.