Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 1: Introduction

Introduction

Networks are a familiar concept because television, radio, and highway networks have been with us for decades. An additional form of network, the computer network, has also been around for more than twenty years, but is less familiar. Computer networks have been less noticeable than other forms of network because we do not see the network itself; rather, we see the results of using the network by making travel reservations and performing financial transactions.

Computer networks provide many services besides travel reservations and financial transactions, but these applications show two important features of computer networks:


	?	They provide shared access to information, such as airline flight status and account balances in the above examples.


	?	They permit the movement of data, such as flight status updates and financial transfers.

At first, these features were most important to geographically dispersed businesses, so computer networks spanned wide geographic areas. Such networks, now referred to as ?wide area networks,? continue to be extremely important, especially as the world moves toward a global economy. However, another form of computer network, the ?local area network? (or ?LAN?), has become just as important. Local area networks are data communications networks that span a physically limited area (generally less than a mile or two), provide high-bandwidth communication over inexpensive media (generally coaxial cable or twisted pair), provide a switching capability, and are usually owned by the user (i.e., not provided by a common carrier).

Three of these physical attributes ? limited...

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Local Area Networks: An Introduction to the Technology

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Chapter 1: Introduction

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