In this tutorial, you are going to learn about Hardware and Networking Devices which includes NIC, Repeater, Hubs, Bridges, Switch, Ethernet and more.
Hardware and Networking Devices
Networking hardware may also be known as network equipment computer networking devices.
Some important networking devices used in the medium of communication are given below:
Network Interface Card (NIC)
NIC provides a physical connection between the networking cable and the computer's internal bus.
NICs comes in three basic varieties 8 bit, 16 bit and 32 bit. The larger number of bits that can be transferred to NIC, the faster the NIC can transfer data to network cable.
Repeater
Repeaters are used to connect together two Ethernet segments of any media type. In larger designs, signal quality begins to deteriorate as segments exceed their maximum length. We also know that signal transmission is always attached with energy loss. So, a periodic refreshing of the signals is required.
Hubs
Hubs are actually multiport repeaters. A hub takes any incoming signal and repeats it out all ports.
Bridges
When the size of the LAN is difficult to manage, it is necessary to break up the network. The function of the bridge is to connect separate networks together. Bridges do not forward bad or misaligned packets.
Switch
Switches are an expansion of the concept of bridging. LAN switches can link 4,6,10 or more networks together.
Cut through switches examine the packet destination address, only before forwarding it onto its destination segment, while a store and-forward switch accepts and analyzes the entire packet before forwarding it to its destination. It takes more time to examine the entire packet, but it allows to catch certain packet errors and keep them from propagating through the network.
Routers
Router forward packets from one LAN (or WAN) network to another. It is also used at the edges of the networks to connect to the Internet.
Gateway
Gateway acts like an entrance between two different networks. Gateway in organisations is the computer that routes the traffic from a work station to the outside network that is serving web pages.
ISP (Internet Service Provider) is the gateway for Internet service at homes.
Ethernet
It is basically a LAN technology which strikes a good balance between speed, cost and easy of installation. The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) defines the Ethernet Standard as IEEE Standard 802.3. This standard defines rule for configuring an Ethernet network as well as specifying how elements in an Ethernet network interact with each other.
Ethernet uses Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detect (CSMNCD) technology, broadcasting each from onto the physical medium (wire fibre and so on). All stations attached to the Ethernet listen to the line for traffic and the station with the matching destination MAC address accepts the frame.
FDDI (Fibre Distributed Data Interface)
This is a form of network configuration, which uses a ring topology of multimedia or single mode optical fibre transmission links operating at 100 Mbps to span up to 200 km and permits up to 500 stations. It employs dual counter rotating rings. Here, 16 and 48 bit addresses are allowed. In FDDI, token is absorbed by station and released as soon as it completes the frame transmission.
This article on Hardware and Networking Devices is contributed by Amal Kumar (Delhi University). If you like TheCode11, then do follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
