In the
past, when two persons were willing to share data between each other, they were
relying on movable disks such as floppy disks and CD-ROM. These ways of
transmitting data between remote computers are often difficult especially if
the files will be transmitted very often.
Because of the
above difficulties in transmitting data across movable disks, the idea of
networking two or more computer has been arisen. Instead of transmitting the
files across movable disks, the computers are connected to each other by cables
through ports on the computer. When someone needs to transmit the data to
another computer, he simply can share the files he needs to transmit across the
network. This way no movable disk is needed and the matter is easier.
When talking
about computer networking, one must differentiate between the many types that
exist for the network. The computer network can be classified according to the
geographical area they occupy or according to the manner they will behave when
sharing and accessing data between the computers in the network.
Let us first see
how they are classified according to the geographical area. The meaning of this
classification is how much the network will occupy or simply what the size of
the network is. There are three types for any networks according to this classification.
They are the LAN, WAN, and MAN. The LAN (Local Area Network) has the smallest
size with respect to the other types. The LAN can occupy a room, a floor, a
building such as company, or at most a group of adjacent buildings. The MAN
(Metropolitan Area Network) can occupy a whole city or even a while state. On
the other hand, the WAN can occupy a whole country, group of countries, or even
the whole world.
The second
classification is according to the data distribution across the network and how
the computers that are connected to each other are treated. There two types of
networks according to this classification. The first one is peer to peer
network. The meaning of this classification is that all computers in the
network are treated as equal. Thus the size of the data on one computer can be
equal to the size on another computer. Also the processing and storage power of
the all devices are equal. Thus there is no computer on the network that is
higher in value than the other computer. Hence the name peer to peer network.
The second type
of networks according to the above classification is the client-server network.
In this type, the matter is different in that not all computers are equal in
value. At the least, there is one computer (that is called the server) that has
much processing power and storage power. Therefore the data is stored on that
computer to be shared across the network. Every computer that needs some data
that is shared across the network can take it from the server only. This is
because all computers other than the server have less sizes of memory and also
processor power.
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