Networking 101
This type of network connects devices within a small geographical area, like a single home or office building.
What is a LAN (Local Area Network)?
LANs are high-speed and private, used for local resource sharing like printers.
This is the general term for a set of rules that govern how data is formatted, transmitted, and received.
What is a Protocol?
This is a small unit of data, containing a header and a payload, sent across a network.
What is a Packet?
This is the primary advantage of a wireless network over a wired one for a modern office worker.
What is Mobility?
This global phenomenon has been drastically accelerated by the technical advances in networking.
What is Globalization?
This network type uses the internet to create a secure, encrypted "tunnel" for remote users to access a private server.
What is a VPN (Virtual Private Network)?
It allows a public connection to act as a private one via encryption.
Protocols use this technique to prevent a fast-sending computer from overwhelming a slower-receiving computer.
What is Flow Control?
It manages the data rate to ensure the receiver can process the incoming packets.
In this transmission method, packets may take different physical paths to the destination and arrive out of order.
What is Packet Switching?
Unlike circuit switching, this maximizes the efficiency of the available bandwidth.
This is a major security disadvantage of wireless networks compared to wired ones.
What is Interceptibility (or ease of eavesdropping)?
The rise of VPNs has significantly changed these, allowing people to work from different time zones and locations.
What are Working Patterns?
These internationally recognized "rules of the road" ensure that a Dell laptop can talk to an Apple server across the globe.
What are Standards?
Standards like IEEE or ISO allow for interoperability between different vendors.
This situation occurs when two nodes are stuck waiting for each other to send a signal, effectively stopping the network.
What is Deadlock?
This process is essential before transmission to save bandwidth and speed up the delivery of large files.
What is Data Compression?
This wireless hardware component acts as a central bridge between wireless devices and a wired network.
What is a Wireless Access Point (WAP)?
This is a social concern often cited in the guide regarding the constant use of wireless devices.
What are Health Issues?
This specific network allows for the interconnection of personal devices, such as a phone and a Bluetooth headset.
What is a PAN (Personal Area Network)?
This conceptual model breaks network communication down into seven distinct layers to simplify design.
What is the OSI Model?
This physical medium uses pulses of light to transmit data at extremely high speeds over long distances.
What is Fiber Optic?
These are two common physical factors that can cause interference or "dead zones" in a WLAN.
What are Walls/Physical Obstructions and Electronic Interference?
To ensure global compatibility, these "common languages" are used internationally to build networks.
What are International Standards?
This "network of networks" uses a common set of protocols (TCP/IP) to connect billions of devices worldwide.
What is the Internet?
This protocol function involves adding a mathematical value to a packet to check if any bits were flipped during transit.
What is Error Checking (or Checksums)?
This characteristic refers to the amount of data that can be transmitted over a network in a fixed amount of time.
What is Transmission Speed (or Bandwidth)?
This software characteristic allows a device to identify and join a specific wireless network.
What is the SSID (Service Set Identifier)?
This "Way of Knowing" in TOK is often applied when we assume a network is "secure" because of encryption we cannot see.
What is Faith (or Trust)?