Network Basics
A group of connected devices that share data and resources.
What is a network?
These are the tools people use to connect to a network, like phones and laptops.
What are end devices?
The physical or wireless path through which data travels
What is transmission media?
The overall structure and design of a network that ensures speed, security, and future growth.
What is network architecture?
When one route between two computers fails, the network finds this instead so the file still arrives.
What is another path (a detour/alternate route)
The global network that connects millions of smaller networks together.
What is the internet?
These devices connect end devices to each other and manage network traffic.
What are intermediary devices?
This type of transmission media uses light, not electricity or radio waves, to send data
What are fiber-optic cables?
This quality lets a network keep working even if one part of it fails.
What is fault tolerance?
A school added laptops, tablets, and 50 new students the next year and the network kept running smoothly — it showed this quality.
What is scalability?
Every device on a network is called this — also known as an end device.
What is a host?
Routers, switches, firewalls, and this fourth type of device let devices join a network without cables.
Routers, switches, firewalls, and this fourth type of device let devices join a network without cables.
This type of host sends a request to a server, like a browser asking for a web page.
What is a client?
This technique splits data into small chunks that can travel different paths to reach the same destination.
What is packet switching?
During a Zoom call, this feature keeps your video smooth even while someone else is downloading a huge file.
What is Quality of Service (QoS)
Besides sharing information and communicating in real time, networks let us access this type of remote computing service.
What are cloud services?
Besides directing and filtering traffic, intermediary devices do this to signals so data can travel longer distances.
What is boosting (amplifying) the signal?
This type of server stores corporate and user files for client devices to access.
What is a file server?
This quality lets a network grow with more users and devices without slowing down
What is scalability?
When a firewall blocks a suspicious website and logs the attempt, it is protecting the network by providing this.
What is (network) security?
End devices and transmission media are two of the three main parts of a network. This is the third — it controls how data moves.
What are intermediary devices?
This is what intermediary devices remember in order to help data find the best path to its destination
What are routes?
In this type of network, every device can act as both a client and a server, with no central server needed.
What is a peer-to-peer (P2P) network?
This feature manages bandwidth so time-sensitive data, like video calls, gets priority over other traffic
What is Quality of Service (QoS)
A message actually travels: end device, media, this device, media, then end device again.
What is an intermediary device (like a router)