Networking 101

Hello all and thank you for joining me today. Today I'm going to start a series on Computer Networking. I'm doing this for two reasons; firstly, to aid my understanding of the subject. Secondly, to help newcomers find their feet, and for veterans of the subject to refresh their knowledge where necessary.
This series will cover basic fundamentals from 'What is a network?' to 'Implementing protocols so that networks can communicate with each other and run effectively'. All this and everything in between and beyond. If there is anything that you would like to see me cover in this series, then please contact me so that I can work it into this blog. As always please follow me, so you'll always be up-to-date with the latest postings.
*Also, if I get anything wrong in this series or I don't cover it in enough depth, please inform me so that I can make amendments*

Without further ado, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of Networking!

The first and most obvious question should be, What is a network?
A network is a series of specialized devices which are connected and are able to communicate with each other over vast distances.

There are two types of devices.
    End Devices
    Intermediary devices.

End devices are standard everyday office items, such as; Computers, Laptops, Tablets and Printers.
Whereas Intermediary devices are; Wired/Wireless Routers, LAN Switch, Multi-layer Switch and Firewall appliances.
I shall explain in further detail later on what each device does and how it can be used/implemented in a network.

In Computer Networking, it is important that you familiarize yourself with acronyms. Below I will write a separate blog post with a list of possible acronyms and abbreviations that are going to be used during this series. However, I've written two below to start us off.

LAN = Local Area Network
WAN = Wide Area Network

A LAN is as the name suggests, 'local' refers to networks in a singular geographical location. These can be found just about anywhere, for example; in homes, shops, other small and large businesses.
A WAN on the other hand, are implemented by large corporate enterprises. For example; Google and Amazon have buildings all over the globe, so they will have LANs which connect to each other worldwide. This is known as a Wide Area Network.

So how does it all work?

You're sitting in your office or in your house, and you are using your Computer, when you decide that you want to send an e-mail to a friend.
So you would start this process by typing up your e-mail and then typing in your friends e-mail address and pressing send. A Network works on fundamentals similar to the e-mail. What I mean by this, is for the e-mail to send and be legible, it requires certain information. Most importantly, the person the e-mail is to be sent too, a greeting, and who the e-mail is from. Most important of all, the e-mail requires a forwarding address, otherwise it will never reach its intended destination.

For a file to be delivered across a network medium, it has to be broken down into something called 'packets'. Packets are snippets of the file which are broken down and labelled with the correct addressing information. These are delivered through a network, often through different routes. They are then reassembled in the correct order, so that the file reads as it should.

Your IP address
The gateway address
The Recipients MAC address

There are three types of network media.

Copper cables - these work by sending data in the form of a series of electrical pulses
Fiber Optic Cabling - these work by sending data in the form of a series of light pulses
Wireless Connectivity - these work by sending data encoded using the electromagnetic spectrum

There are two types of copper cabling - Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) and Shielded Twisted Pair
(STP).
Shielded Twisted Pair cables are more expensive. However, these are more often used where there is likely to be Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) or Radio Frequency Interference (RFI).
Copper cables terminate with an RJ45 connector which are known as a standard LAN connector.

That is all for now, I hope this hasn't been too overwhelming and that you've enjoyed your first steps into Computer Networking. Please let me know if you've enjoyed this post and what else you would like to see added to this series in the future.

Next time, I'll try and cover some Protocols and Organizations which govern the protocols surrounding Computer Networking.