What are Computer Networks and their most common terms
Introduction
In this Article ” What are Computer Networks and their most common terms “, I am going to explain everything related to this important topic.
If you love computers and use the internet daily, you need to know the basics of computer networks. If you want to delve deeper into Servers, Information security, and how customers remotely connect to your servers. I will try to cover most of the topics related to computer networks and their components.
Computer Networks
To begin with, let’s look at the practical definition of Computer Networks.
Computer networks can be defined as the exchange of packets between computing devices across the world with the help of means of data transmission such as optical wires and cables, among others.
Internet considered as one of the computer networks types
Computer Networks common terms
I will also look at Common terms, components, and their function in Computer networks. The most common terms in computer networks are:
Nodes
A node is a device such as a computer, mobile, tablet, or whatever, and any device that attempts to exchange (send or receive) packets over the network with another similar device.
Packages
Information or the unit of data exchanged over the network between two nodes.
Internet Protocol: IPs
Assuming you want to send a gift to your friend on his birthday; and where Will you send it? To his address, right?
Same issue here; computer scientists wanted to define computers on the internet using a unique number that does not repeat, similar to a phone number. So, they introduced the concept of TCP/IP; i.e., the IP address of any computer is its address on the network.
Technically, it consists of 32 numbers used to identify devices on the network. Connections are made only according to the concept of IP addresses. Suppose you want to upload a file to a site and let it be Google drive when speaking at the lowest level in the networks. Your file will turn into several packages and each of them will carry the address of the destination sent to it.
Top-level IP addresses are classified into two types :
IPv4
32-digit addresses in four Bytes format, e.g. 104.244.42.129 is the IPv4 address of a site twitter.com. and this type is stable and widely used in the world.
IPv6
A new type of address consisting mainly of eight totals, each set of numbers according to hexadecimal counting system,
For instance: 2001:0cb8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334
This type is unstable and therefore not widely used.
The internet still uses IPv4 addresses because of its stability. And yet it is not possible to guess when we will start using unstable IPv6.
How many IPv4 Classes?
IPv4 is divided into five classes: A, B, C, D, E.
- Class A starts from 1.X.X.X to 126.X.X.X
- Class B it starts at 128.0.X.X to 191.255.X.X
- In class C, it starts from 192.0.0.X to 223.255.255.X
- Classes D and E are used for experimental purposes.
What are the types of IPv4 addresses?
IPv4 addresses are mainly of two types:
Static
This type uses one IP address for one device all the time; for instance, servers remote host applications and websites, etc.
Dynamic
In general, this type is used to assigning IP to each computer on the internet for instance, if you turn off the router and turn it on again, you will see that the IP of the computer will change, that is, the IP changes every time the internet connection is made.
Router
A device that specifically passes packets from one device to another over the network. The computer does not know where the rest of the computers are and not everyone can be emailed. So, the Router knows the source of the transmission and the destination received and scrolls from the source to the destination.
Router devices have protocols called “routing Protocols” that coordinate the exchange of information between one Router and another or between it and another network. In other words, the Routing Protocol can be defined as a way of communicating between routers.
Router machines build a “routing table” that identifies the best routes through which packets should be sent.
The “Routing Table” consists of a list of routes from one Router to another. Each route has the addresses of the router/node devices in the network and how to access them.
Network Address Translation: NAT
A technology used by Router devices to provide internet services to as many devices as possible with as few public IP addresses as possible. A single IP address in the Router is assigned by the internet service providers.
The Router then assigns a private IP to all devices connected to it. This technology helps internet service providers provide internet access to as many users as possible.
Connecting your computer to the router, you will see the internet the public IP predicate in the router unlike the private IP predicate in the computer you will not see.
Assume that the IP assigned to your computer is 192.168.1.100 and you want to access a location In3case.com whose address is 144.208.73.28.
Simply put, since the address assigned to your device is private, the IP in the router, which is public, will be added to the data packets, which in turn will be transmitted over the internet, representing the public IP assigned to the router, not the computer’s IP.
The site will see that the router’s IP requests location information, then the site will send its information in packet form to the router because the router is assigned a public IP and when you reach the router it will pass the packet in turn to your computer.
So, the basic idea of NAT is to separate the IP addresses used within the Router’s network from the IP addresses used on the internet.
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol: DHCP
It is a protocol that is responsible for automatically assigning the IP address to each host computer or workstation, and often there is a Router that does this job called DHCP Server.
Domain Name System /Server: DNS
When you want to access a particular website on the internet, you need to know the name of this website, which consists of several parts, are as follows:
1. The first part of the title is the protocol used to access information like HTTP or HTTPS, etc.
2. The second part of the address is the domain name of the site.
3. The last part of the title is intended to display the category to which the site is classified such as com, org, net, Edu.
Can’t share data based on the address of the type mentioned above because young people don’t understand this way but understand IP addresses and therefore there’s a protocol named DNS laboratory to save addresses of websites and the IP address of each site.
How does the DNS protocol work?
There is a server in each network dedicated protocol DNS his job and the independence of the requests to know the IP address of the site to be accessed by the host.
DNS Server searches in its database for the IP of the site to be accessed. And if it does not find it DNS Server communicates with another DNS Server in another network to obtain the IP of the site and after obtaining it sends packets to the address of the site.
Internet Service Providers: ISPs
Are companies that provide internet service bypassing access requests for websites and data to their destination.
Conclusion
When we put all these parts together, we’ll understand how the computer network works and we can summarize all of the above as follows:
- When the computer/device is connected to the network, the router to which it is connected will be assigned a private IP address. The router has a public IP address assigned to it by the internet service provider ISP.
- All devices connected to the network have a private IP address that is not duplicated.
- Internet service providers are all over the world and all connected to each other. They selling internet services to Corresponding Regional and local companies.
- When a device establishes a connection with other devices in another similar network, it does so and is an identifier with the router. So that the router, in turn, encapsulates the packets sent at the top of the port number with the public type IP address assigned to the router by the internet service provider. (Here NAT technology is applied).
- The router sends the packets to the target destination as other routers do the same work as the router and analyze the received packets to see which device /computer they came from.
- On the other hand, the receiving device/computer has sent to the connected router the IP address of the device/computer with the port number.
- When the router receives the packets, it analyzes them, then passes them to the desired destination.
To sum up, Now, you should be able to understand what are computer networks and their common terms. With a full understanding of each explanation. I have tried to gather all that you may need to be fully understanding of these terms. I hope that you enjoy this article and got what you are seeking.
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