group17_the spark:understanding of computer networks

Computer network is a collection of several autonomous computers interconnected by a single technology .

• Computer networks use a well defined mutually agreed set of rules and conventions known as protocols.
• They interact with one another who are authenticated and authorized.
• They allow source sharing preferabally in a predictable and controllable manner.

NEED OF COMPUTER NETWORKS:
Resource sharing and communication are the two principle reasons of building and using computer networks.
Some of the most popular applications include email, web browser, digital libraries, video -on-demand, file transfer, video or audio conferencing, e-commerce, etc.
Computers in a network are interconnected through a transmission media through which the data can be shared.
Transmission media are classified into wire based and wireless media.

• Wired media includes fiber optic cables, twisted pair cable, coaxial cable etc
• wireless media includes bluetooth, infrared, terrestrial microwaves, communication satellites, cellular and pcs systems, wireless LANs etc

There are two main types of computer networking which includes client-server and peer to peer.

• In client-server computing, computer plays a major role known as server where the files, data in the form of web pages, documents, data base and resources are placed and the computers in this network are called clients and they receive data from the server.

eg: personal area network(PAN)

• In peer-peer networks, all the computers play the same role and no computer acts as a centralised server.

eg: local area network(LAN), wide area network(WAN)