NETWOTK

There has been a lot of talk in the press about the “Information Superhighway”. People talk about “cruising the net”, “surfing in Cyberspace” and a number of other largely meaningless and highly jargonised phrases. But for many people, even some computer users, it is still a thing shrouded in mystery and, to an extent, suspicion.

Unfortunately, getting access to this ‘Internet’ isn’t that obvious. There are some difficult concepts to overcome, often some obstructive hardware to grapple with. Consequently many who have managed to conquer their fear and lack of knowledge when they first came to computing now find themselves in exactly the same situation again facing the world of international computing

This document has been compiled to help such people. In preparing this overview extensive use has been made of a particular document, details of which are on the back page. The aim of this document is to explain:

What is a Network?

 Most of the time, PC users work on their own with their PC connected to nothing more exciting than a printer. However, it has always been possible to connect two PCs with a piece of wire so that they can communicate – usually just to transfer files.  

This, in essence, is all a network is – two or more computers connected by a physical piece of wire. The connection between the two computers is then managed and operated by some special software.

Local Area Networks

 It makes sense, most often for financial reasons but also for others, to network groups of computers where they share a common workload. Networking computers means that the people using them can share files easily, send each other messages and share each other’s printers. This idea has developed into Local Area Networks (LANs). Nowadays most organisations have a local area network. LANs can be as small as just one shared office or as large as a whole city.  

            Wide Area Networks

 In some cases an organisation is spread over a large area, and you do not have the easy concentration of computing to provide a LAN for. In this instance computers may be connected by a Wide Area Network (WAN). The difference between a WAN and a LAN is partly one of scale (although this is relative) but also relates to the technology. With a LAN you will typically get a fast network that can network PC file servers. With a WAN the network will often be much slower and will usually involve some mainframe computer as the server rather than a PC.