What is a network & why do we care? Any time you have two or more computers connected together, you have a local area network (LAN). A network allows the computers to share files, printers, scanners, and even an Internet connection. Why do we care? Save Money. By sharing a single Internet connection with every computer on the network, you can reduce your Internet access costs. Save Space. Networked computers can all share the same printer and scanner, freeing up desk and shelf space. Work Anywhere. Wireless Networks let laptop users work anywhere in the house or office. Just turn it on and you're online. Share Media. Swap your favorite pictures, music, and movies with other computers on your network. 2. What are protocols? Indicates which upper-layer protocol receives incoming packets after IP processing is complete. WAN Protocols (Frame Relay, ATM): A computer network that spans a relatively large geographical area.
Typically, a WAN consists of two or more local-area networks (LANs). Internet Protocols (TCP, IP, FTP, SMTP): The Internet Protocol (IP) is a network-layer (Layer 3) protocol that contains addressing information and some control information that enables packets to be routed. IP is documented in RFC 791 and is the primary network-layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite. Along with the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), IP represents the heart of the Internet protocols. IP has two primary responsibilities: providing connectionless, best-effort delivery of datagram through an internet work; and providing fragmentation and reassembly of datagram to support data links with different maximum-transmission unit (MTU) sizes. LAN Protocols (Token Ring, Ethernet) LAN protocols function at the lowest two layers of the OSI reference model, "Internetworking Basics," between the physical layer and the data link layer. A LAN is a high-speed data network that covers a relatively small geographic area. It...