Before networks existed, people gave files on floppy disks to others to copy to their computers or the documents have to be printed out so that others can use and edit them. Another thing is that the only way to print a document was for people to take turns sitting at the computer directly connected to a printer.
A network is used to make work and communication faster and more efficient. It consists of two or more computers connected to each other (It could be a peer-to-peer or a client-based connection. I’m going to explain them later!) so that they can share data and information.
You might encounter terms like networking and internetworking throughout this lecture note. You might get confused but don’t! Here’s how they differ from each other:
Networking is a concept of connected computers sharing resources like data, graphics, messages, printers, fax machines, modems, and other hardware resources. Any machine that is capable of communicating on the network is referred to as a device or node.
Internetworking is the capability of two or more networks to communicate using special hardware and software.
With those short definitions, I hope you can now differentiate those two confusing terms…huh!
Advantages of having computer networks
1. It allows people to share hardware resources.
2. People can send and receive information more quickly.
3. It reduces costs of providing hardware resources (since it can be shared) in a company.
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