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| A peer to peer network is one in which lacks a dedicated server and every computer acts as both a client and a server. This is a good networking solution when there are 10 or less users that are in close proximity to each other. A peer to peer network can be a security nightmare, because the people setting permissions for shared resources will be users rather than administrators and the right people may not have access to the right resources. More importantly the wrong people may have access to the wrong resources, thus, this is only recommended in situations where security is not an issue |
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| This type of network is designed to support a large number of users and uses dedicated server/s to accomplish this. Clients log in to the server/s in order to run applications or obtain files. Security and permissions can be managed by 1 or more administrators which cuts down on network users medling with things that they shouldn't be. This type of network also allows for convenient backup services, reduces network traffic and provides a host of other services that comes with the network operating system(NOS) |
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| This is also a client/server based model that is most often seen in UNIX environments, but the clients are "dumb terminals". This means that the client may not have a floppy drive, hard disk or CDROM and all applications and processing occur on the server/s. As you can imagine, this requires fast and expensive server/s. Security is very high on this type of network |
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| This topology is an old one and essentially has each of the computers on the network daisy-chained to each other |
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The star topology uses twisted pair (10baseT or 100baseT) cabling and requires that all devices are connected to a hub
ADVANTAGES: centralized monitoring, failures do not affect others unless it is the hub, easy to modify.
DISADVANTAGES: If the hub fails then everything connected to it is down. This is like if you were to burn down the phone company's central office, then anyone connected to it wouldn't be able to make any phone calls. |
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Definition
The ring topology looks the same as the star, except that it uses special hubs and ethernet adapters. The ring topology is used with Token Ring networks.
ADVANTAGES: Equal access.
DISADVANTAGES: Difficult to troubleshoot, network changes affect many users, failures affect many users. |
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Definition
| Hybrid topologies are combinations of the above and are common on very large networks. For example, a star bus network has hubs connected in a row (like a bus network) and has computers connected to each hub as in the star topology. |
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| In a true mesh topology every node has a connection to every other node in the network. A full mesh network can be very expensive, but provides redundancy in case of a failure between links |
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Term
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Definition
As the name implies, wireless networks allow computers to comunicate without the use of cables. IEEE 802.11b defines two pieces of equipment, a wireless station, which is usually a PC or a Laptop with a wireless network interface card (NIC), and an Access Point (AP),which acts as a bridge between the wireless stations and Distribution System (DS) or wired networks. An 802.11b wireless network adapter can operate in two modes, Ad-Hoc and Infrastructure. In infrastructure mode, all your traffic passes through a wireless ‘access point’. In Ad-hoc mode your computers talk directly to each other and do not need an access point at all. 802.11b delivers data throughput of 11 Mbps and 802.11g runs at 54mbps.
ADVANTAGES: World-wide acceptance. Ranges over 150 feet. Freedom to move about and no cables (obvious).
DISADVANTAGES: Susceptible to interference from objects such as microwave ovens and cordless phones. |
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