This article will be a 4 section article; the first section will be about the components of a network. The second section will be about the basic configuration of a network and how it operates. The third section is where we get into the basic troubleshooting techniques that you can use to solve common networking problems. The last section will focus on the wireless network and some security issues with it.
So before we delve into the world of network troubleshooting, let’s go through some of the basic components of an Ethernet network:
Ethernet cable
This is your basic network cable. The connectors look like a RJ-11 (which is your typical phone line cable) but a little bigger. There are 2 types of Ethernet cable, which are the crossover cable and the straight-through cable.
The straight-through cable is the cables you will normally use. It is used for connecting a PC to a hub, DSL/ADSL modem, switch, modem-router or a router. To identify this type of cable, the color coordination of each end would be the same
The crossover cable is used to connect 1 PC to another PC. It can also be used to daisy-chain switches or hubs via a normal Ethernet port. To identify this type of cable, the color coordination on both ends is not the same.
Network Card (NIC)
This is your card in your PC or laptop whereby you will connect a RJ-45 cable in. It usually is at the back of the PC and can be found anywhere on the laptop, but its more commonly on the side or at the back. Most laptops would also have a wireless network card. For this type of network card, you don’t need a cable to connect to a network, but you do need a wireless router or an access point.
Hub
A hub is a piece of hardware to connect 2 or more PCs to one another via your standard crossover Ethernet cable. Hubs are rarely used nowadays and are being replaced by switches. Why? Well its because when a PC sends a message across the network, it will send it to all the PCs on the network, and if there is a lot of traffic there will be traffic congestion on the network. Switches solve this problem.
Switch
A switch functions much like a hub, but it does not broadcast messages across the network like a hub does. If a PC wants to send a message to another PC on the network, the message will only go to that PC. This is done via the creation of a virtual route to that PC using a network map which the switch creates.
Router
Routers are a step above the switch, but work almost the same as a switch. The main difference is that a switch is a layer 2 (referring to the OSI model) device, which means it uses a physical address, whereas a router is a layer 3 device. It uses the network address (in our case of an Ethernet network, it uses the IP address) to perform route and switch traffic. Routers are usually used to connect 2 networks to one another, whereas a switch is usually used to connect 2 or more PCs to one another.
MAC/Physical Address
Ever network card, switch and router built have a MAC address. We won’t concern ourselves with the MAC address of switches and routers at this moment but just with the NIC’s MAC address. The MAC address of a NIC is in hexadecimal, which means it uses numbers 0-9 and letters A-F and consists of 12 Hex digits. The first 6 will be the manufacturer’s ‘code’ whereas the last 6 would be the unique code for the NIC. Therefore if you have 2 NICs from the same manufacturer, you would see that the first 6 Hex digits will be the same. Why we need to know this is that some networks allow us to register our MAC address so that no other PC can connect to that network unless it has registered its MAC address (this is an especially good feature if you have a wireless network, because no one can access your wireless network if they don’t have their MAC address registered)
Network/Logical Address
There are different formats of logical addresses, but the one we will be talking about would be the TCP/IP’s IP address. This is represented by decimal digits on the form of “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx”. Usually on your home network, you would have an address of “192.168.x.x” or “10.x.x.x”. I will not go into much detail about this but these will be your internal IP addresses which are assigned to your network cards by your router/switch. Your external IP address would be different, as it would have to be provided by your ISP (Internet Service Provider), as it needs to be a unique address on the internet.
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Category: Games / Strategy & War
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Category: Internet / Browsers
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Pocket Tunes for Windows Mobile 4.1 is a multimedia player developed for Windows Mobile for Pocket PC devices. This Version of Pocket Tunes can be installed in Pocket PC devices running the most recent Windows MobileVersion, Windows Mobile 6.1.
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Category: Audio / MP3 Search Tools
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Category: Games / Puzzles
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Category: Games / Tools & Editors
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Category: Home & Education / Miscellaneous
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Category: Audio / Audio Players
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