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Home and Small Office Networking Guide Computers Articles | July 13 Cheap Sven Andrighetto Hoodie , 2009

With the plethora of desktop and mobile devices in your home or office connectivity between everything and to the Internet is vital for maximum productivity and entertainment.? This guide walks through the various standards, the devices that support flexible connectivity options and how you can use them for maximum benefit.


So what is a network?

A network supports the interconnection of many devices and a protocol for ensuring they can communicate with one another in the most effective way.? The best way to understand how networks work is to visualise each element of the network as a layer, one on top of another.? The conceptual model that describes this layered model is known as the OSI Reference Model, which has seven layers.? All Network professionals use this in their day to day design and engineering work.


For our purposes we can simplify it into three layers Cheap Tyson Barrie Hoodie , going from the bottom up there is:


1.???? The Physical layer ? the cable between machines (typically called 100BaseT, uses four pairs), the card in the back of your machine (802.3 Ethernet NIC) or Wireless Networking adapter (802.11n etc) etc.


2.???? Data Link, Network and Transport Layers ? Responsible for managing the addressing Cheap Semyon Varlamov Hoodie , routing and packaging of data around the network.? Includes the Internet protocol (TCPIP), gaming and file transfer based protocols (such as UDP), and VPN networking from home to your office (PPTP or IPSec)


3.???? And the Session, Presentation and Application Layers ? file sharing and database access in the office (NetBIOS Cheap Patrick Roy Hoodie , Named Pipes, NFS), Internet browsing (HTTP, DNS) Cheap Mikko Rantanen Hoodie , eMail (MIME, SMTP, POP3) and securing Internet banking or shopping (SSLTLS)


Breaking it out into layers like this helps us understand when we buy software or hardware which layer(s) it works at and therefore what it can provide for us.? Is it providing connectivity, access to another Wide Area Network (WAN Cheap Gabriel Landeskog Hoodie , i.e. for the Internet), security or access to my own Local Area Network (LAN, i.e. for access to a printer).? It?s extremely useful when diagnosing problems with networks.

Network Addressing

In order to send a letter to your friend in the next town, or a country on the other side of the world the postal system requires an address which hones down through the address layers from country to house number to narrow down exactly where your friend lives and which post box the postman should drop the letter in.? Digital Networks work in a similar way only rather than moving mail around they move digital data packets.


MAC addresses - The Media Access Control address identifies a single piece of hardware on the physical network and is a scheme with a long number designed to be globally unique.? It?s set in the hardware at the point of manufacture.? An example of a MAC address is 1A-2F-1D-9C-7A-3C (Layer 2).


IP address ? The Internet Protocol address uniquely identifies all network interfaces that are typically endpoints on the Internet Cheap Nathan MacKinnon Hoodie , or your own local IP based network (in an office).? Within the local or global (Internet) address space the IP address must be unique, otherwise the IP routing protocol won?t know where to send the packet.? An IP address will be mapped across to a physical MAC address as described above, the mapping is held in the routing tables of router hardware on the network.? A sample IP address is 192.168.0.1 (Layer 4).? Addresses are divided up into Class A, B and C each having a larger address space for larger organisations requirements.? Small offices and domestic addresses are almost always Class C and the 192.168.0.nnn network is reserved for anyone to use on any small private network.


DNS name (and server) ? Domain Name Server based addresses are just names Cheap Matt Duchene Hoodie , with dots to designate levels of uniqueness.? We are all familiar with Internet domain names such as; www.cryopc.co, the DNS name in this instance is the ?cryopc? element of the full address.? DNS servers store all these hostnames and the IP addresses they map to.

Network Security

Your home hubrouter will usually have built in security features, including the following:


MAC identification ? Using the MAC address of the hardware as a list of authorised hardware to access your network.? Its a good basic precaution but unfortunately a dedicated hacker can spoof a known MAC address and gain access if they really want to.? It just stops the opportunists.


WEP and WPA ? Are the most widely available forms of wireless network encryption and security.? Without the WEP or WPA keys your wireless network is unusable to outsiders.? WEP is now considered quite weak as hackers have demonstrated ways of cracking it fairly quickly, and once cracked its no longer secure.? WPA is the more secure system as it is harder to crack (has a much longer passphrase) and once cracked still only leaves a very small window of opportunity for exploitation as it derives a cipher for each packet that changes constantly.? It utilises TLS encryption just like the Internet checkout padlock.? Still the network is only ever as secure as the passphrase used to protect it Cheap Matt Nieto Shirt , so pick an obscure one.


VPN, SSLTLS and IPsec ? Most of us don?t even know we are using these technologies but they all work in a similar way.? They use sophisticated and robust encryption to ensure private information sent over a public network is not visible to snoopers.? SSLTLS is used most widely and you will recognise it as the checkout padlock, or encryption used when typing in credit card details when Internet shopping.


NAT ? Network Address Translation isn?t really security at all but about economising on the rapidly diminishing availability of IPv4 addresses on the Internet, but it does shield your private network addre Do you want to grab . Cheap Air Max Cheap Air Max 90 Cheap Air Max Shoes Cheap Air Max Shoes Jordan 1 Shoes For Sale Air Max 1 Outlet Cheap Jerseys China Wholesale NFL Jerseys Free Shipping Cheap NFL Jerseys Free Shipping Cheap Jerseys Wholesale