Before you understand how to network, you must understand what networking is. Basically, computer networking is connecting two or more computers together so they can exchange data. This can be done through wires, fiber optics, with infrared cameras and even through radio waves. Most of the time it will be through wires because the other methods are expensive. Networks enable companies to provide great services, extremely fast and all over the world.

Before going further into details about networking, it is imperative that you understand some of the basic terminology so that you can better grasp the concepts. First off, you must understand the difference between hardware and software. Hardware is anything that you can

physically touch in a computer. This consists of computer components like monitors, printers, keyboards, hard drives, mice, CD-ROMs, sound cards, video cards, etc. Software is the actual information that is in a computers hard drive or on a disk, CD or DVD. The disk itself is not software but the data inside it is. This could be any program like Windows 98, Word, and Excel. It is also all your games, accounting programs, graphics programs, etc. For the most part, the only software that has an effect on networking is your operating system, or OS, and your protocols. An operating system is the software on your computer that runs all your hardware and all your other software. Most home computers will !

Next you must understand data size. A single amount of binary information is a 1 or a 0, or a bit. 8 bits is a byte. To give you and example, single typewritten characters like an As and Bs or 1s and 2s takes up 1 byte. 1000 bytes is a Kilobyte and 1000 Kilobytes is a Megabyte, or a Meg. A CD contains 650 Megabytes of information. And 1000 Megabytes is a Gigabyte or a Gig. With that information you can understand what bandwidth is. Bandwidth is the amount of data the can be transmitted in a second. For example, the bandwidth of a 56k modem is 56 kilobytes per second. The last concept is LANs and WANs. A LAN is a local area network and a WAN is a wide area network. A LAN consists of a group of networked computers in a single building or group of buildings. A WAN is a group of networked computers that can be anywhere in the world. Generally only large corporations can afford to have a WAN.

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ecause they easily connect to other hubs, which can form their own stars and grow very large.

In order to have computers communicate you must connect them together. All you need to do so is a network interface card, or NIC, in each computer and a cable connect them. The NICs must have the right connecter to match the cable you use. There are many types of NICs and cables to choose from. One type of cable is coaxial which looks just like television cable except there are two variants. One is called thinnet, which uses a thin coaxial cable. It is sometimes called 10base2. This means that it transmits at 10 Megabits per second and can travel 200 meters between computers. The other variant

Some common words found in the essay are:
LANs LANs, Information Technology, Netware Operating, Appletalk ATM, Word Excel, WANs LAN, Gigabyte Gig, Internet Protocol, CD DVD, Meg CD, operating systems, type cable, twisted pair, hard drive disk, hardware software, computer networking, software hardware, hard drive, sometimes called, means transmits, computers communicate,
Approximate Word count = 1612
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)