What exactly do you mean when you say "computer networking"?
Computer networking refers to the interconnection of computing equipment that may exchange data and share resources.
COMPUTER: Common Operating Machine Purposely Used for Technological and Educational Research
WWW
The World Wide Web (WWW) is an information system in which documents and other resources are identified by URLs and are accessible over the internet via hyperlinks.
Assume your professor instructed the whole class to write an assignment without providing any fundamental structure. Then what happens? Everyone in the class will write in their fashion. So, in the end, the professor can have a tough time evaluating the assignment, correct? Similarly, if we want to communicate and exchange data with people worldwide, having some basic rules in place would make it a lot easier. So, we call these basic rules Protocols. ex:- TCP, UDP, HTTP (we will learn about these later on).
Client-Server Architecture
We now understand what protocols are, but to put them into action, we need a data transmitter and receiver. As a result, we refer to the request sender as the Client and the response sender as Server.
A server is a device or program that provides a service to another computer program and its user, also known as the client.
Example:- If I want to know when Titanic was released, I will look it up on the internet. Google.com is the client in this case, and it requests information to the Google server, which receives the request and responds to the client. When this procedure is completed, the necessary information will be shown on the Google webpage.
You might be wondering, "Can my PC be a server?" The answer is YES. Your computer may also act as a server, but only while you work on localhost.
Internet Protocol Address (IP address)
We all have distinct names in this world, right? Similarly, any device on the internet that may share or communicate with one another has an IP Address. The format of IP addresses is X.X.X.X. Each X, in this case, can have a value ranging from 0 to 255. To make our lives easier, we name those IP addresses domain names, such as google.com, facebook.com, instagram.com, and so on. Every computer is assigned an IP address.
Port Numbers
Assume you're looking for something on the internet. As a result, you make a request. This request travels from the computer to the Internet Service Provider (ISP), then to the main server. As a result, when the main server responds to the ISP, the ISP responds to your computer using your IP address. But how do you know which program on your computer made the request now? Isn't it tough to figure out? Port Numbers are used in overcoming this problem.
The port number helps in finding the requested application on the IP address. To put it simply, when you submit a request, you include an IP address and a port number. So, when the server responds to the IP address, the response is shared with the appropriate application using the port number.
Ports are 16-bit numbers. So, the total port numbers available are 2^16 =65,536. To make our lives easy there are some well-defined port numbers. Ex:- HTTP port number is 80.
The pace at which digital data is transported from the Internet to your computer is referred to as download speed, whereas upload speed is the rate at which online data is delivered from your computer to the Internet. These are commonly referred to as upload and download speeds.
Let us now recollect our memories and consider if we have ever heard the terms LAN, MAN, and so forth. I'm guessing you heard these things in sixth or seventh grade. Isn't it a long time? No issue, let's bring it up again.
**Local Area Network (LAN):-**This links computers inside a certain geographical area, such as a home, school, or college.
Metropolitan Area Network (MAN):- This interconnects users with computer resources in a geographic region of the size of a metropolitan area like cities.
Wide Area Network (WAN):- This extends over large geographic areas like countries.
The Internet is the collection of all these LAN, MAN, and WAN.
Modem & Router
Modem:- It is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into an analog format.
Router:- A device that forwards data packets between computer networks.
Topology
It is the arrangement with which computer systems are connected. There are 5 topologies
1. Bus Topology:- They are connected to a single backbone. The limitations of this are if one part is broken entire system will fail and only one person can send information at any moment.
2. Ring Topology:- They are connected in a ring form. So, every system communicates with one another. The limitations of this are if one of the scales breaks then we won't be able to send data and unnecessary calls are made.
3. Star Topology:- There will be one central device that will be connected to all computers. If they want to communicate they should pass through the central device. So, if the central device fails then the system will go down.
4. Tree Topology:- It is a combination of Bus and Star topology. It means many stars are connected in a busway.
5. Mesh Topology:- Every single computer is connected to every single computer.
That's all for now. Please like and share if you found this information informative. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section and I will do my best to answer them.
Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next time.