Network Introduction from OPENXTRA
A network is two or more devices connected together in order to facilitate the transfer of information from one device to another.
A network can either be connected using various types of network cabling, or it can be a wireless network. Typically, larger networks are a combination of physical wired networks & wireless networks.
The art & science of managing a network is network management.
Devices can be connected together in a number of different network topologies.
The most common network is the peer to peer network. Once a network has grown larger than a few devices, it is often necessary to introduce a client/server architecture. The introduction of a server often makes managing information easier as all important data can be protected on a single machine.
Networks can grow very large, encompassing millions of devices & spanning the whole world.
Modern networks are intended to be resilient in the event of one or more nodes failing.
Most networks use the TCP/IP protocol. TCP/IP was designed during the cold war in order to ensure that US military networks kept working in the event of a nuclear strike.
The most widely used version of TCP/IP is IPv4. A new, improved version of TCP/IP has been invented called IPv6.
IPv6 is slowly gaining acceptance worldwide. It is being implemented most quickly in the Far East, where IPv4 use is most troublesome due to a lack of available IP addresses.
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