Routing achieved commercial popularity in the mid-1980s - at a time when large-scale internetworking began to replace the fairly simple, homogeneous environments that had been the norm hitherto. Routing is the act of moving information across an … [Read more...]

Bridges became commercially available in the early 1980s. At the time of their introduction their function was to connect separate homogeneous networks. Subsequently, bridging between different networks - for example, Ethernet and Token Ring - has … [Read more...]

Hubs/repeaters are used to connect together two or more network segments of any media type. In larger designs, signal quality begins to deteriorate as segments exceed their maximum length. Hubs provide the signal amplification required to allow a … [Read more...]

Network interface cards, commonly referred to as NICs, are used to connect a PC to a network. The NIC provides a physical connection between the networking medium and the computer's internal bus, and is responsible for facilitating an access method … [Read more...]

Networks are made up of both hardware and software. The network hardware provides the physical connections between the network's various nodes and typically includes: Network Interface Cards (NICs), one for each PC Network devices such as … [Read more...]

By early 2000 a revolution was underway in an entirely new form of peer-to-peer computing. Sparked by the phenomenal success of a number of highly publicised applications, P2P computing - as it is commonly referred to - heralded a new computing … [Read more...]

Client-server networking architectures became popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s as many applications were migrated from centralised minicomputers and mainframes to networks of personal computers. The design of applications for a distributed … [Read more...]

In a Peer-to-peer networking architecture each computer (workstation) has equivalent capabilities and responsibilities. There is no server, and computers simply connect with each other in a workgroup to share files, printers, and Internet access. … [Read more...]

The next step in Ethernet's evolution was driven by the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance, formed in 1996. The ratification of associated Gigabit Ethernet standards was completed in the summer of 1999, specifying a physical layer that uses a mixture of proven technologies from the original Ethernet … [Read more...]

Fast Ethernet was officially adopted in the summer of 1995, two years after a group of leading network companies had formed the Fast Ethernet Alliance to develop the standard. Operating at ten times the speed of regular 10Base-T Ethernet, Fast … [Read more...]