Don Schlangle
CSIS 161
2-12-2001
Network Design Consultants:
A Service Project
Before
we start there is some basic terminology that you need to know. There are three
types of networks a LAN for Local Area Network, a WAN for Wide Area Network, and MAN for Metropolitan Area
Network. All of theses networks talk to each other in language or set of rules
called protocols.
Before
1990 people use to have to use a dumb computer called a Terminal in order to
access a network. Back then it was not called a network but a mainframe. You
had to connect to a computer called a gateway before you even had access to the
mainframe. After about 1991 people began to realize that there had to be some
better way to connect computers together. So the implementation of LAN’s (Local
Area Networks) and Internetworking came into effect. Internetworking use’s Bridges,
Routers, and Gateways to connect LAN’s to WAN’s (Wide Area Networks) or like
type of networks. Bridges do exactly what they sound like they do they connect
two separate LAN’s, or roads if will, together. This would be used in an office building where you have two LAN’s,
one on the 2nd floor and a second on the 3rd floor. A bridge
would be used to connect these two networks together, so that the secretary can
print to her boss’s office upstairs. A
router is used when LAN’s and WAN’s connect or when LAN’s & WAN’s of different
protocols need to be connected. If your secretary is at her PC outside your
office but you need her to print to the CEO’s Macintosh in the next building it
would have to go through a router before it got to the CEO’s computer. The gateways used today run of the same
principel as the ones before. Except they now connect networks together a lot like
a router does. It can translate different protocols for two different networks.
With these types of networks in place it
opened a door way for new communications between people. Weather it be Timmy telling his grandmother
happy birthday or Bob sending a digital memo to his department saying they will
not be receiving a Christmas bonus this year. The business area is were the
most support has come for the implementation of computer networks. The amount
of time and money that it saves is enormous
compared to how a business was run 20 years ago. Some of the most
successful business are the business that employment the tools that a computer
network is built to do. One of these tools is Email, email is the most used and
in my opinion the most influential of all reasons for networks to be interlarded.
Ah yes
we cannot forget the all might and all knowing Internet. This entity is
probably the sole reason that I am talking to you today. Ok not really but a lot of people think that
it is so powerful that it can control our lives. This is not true, we can
use it as a tool to help us in our day to day lives. Kind of like an automobile.
The internet is what most people have networks for. Is so they can connect to
the Internet and plays games or chat or do email. This tool of ours that most
of us have become so dependent on is going to become even more of a necessity
as they will be used in many of our common house hold appliance’s. How it will
work is that your refrigerator will have a barcode scanner in it and when ever
you put you groceries away you scan the item
and the refrigerator checks it off your shopping list. When it is gone
or past the experation date it simply orders a new one for your next pickup. It
does this over the Internet just as if it were a computer sending and receiving
email. Also as well your TV Cable and Satellite will be obsolete and all you
will have to do is pick the TV show or movie that you would like to see and it
will be at your fingertips. Same for games (Microsoft XBOX, Playstation 2 or 3).
These will all connect right to your television and to the internet every thing
will be at such a high speed that entertainment as we know it will be like
black and white televisions.