FREE online courses on Information Technology - Chapter 8 NETWORK &
COMMUNICATIONS IN I T - Local Area Networks
The first people to buy personal computers used them as
stand-alone devices. These individuals bought freedom and independence from the
professional information services staff. Soon, however, user found it
advantageous to share devices like laser printers. The most common way to share
devices, data, and programs is through a
local area network (LAN). The local area network is an approach to
connecting various devices that need to communicate with each other and that are
grouped closely together as in a single building.
There are two major architectures for LANs. The first is a
peer-to-peer network in which all PCs are connected to each other. Data on the
network are passed from one PC to the next. As a user, you must devote some of
the resources of your workstation to accepting and passing data on the network.
Each computer on the LAN incurs this type of overhead. Peer-to-peer LANs are
relatively inexpensive and represent an attractive alternative for a small
network.
The second type of LAN is more popular and employs a file server. The server is a computer that responds the requests from its clients or
user PCs. A client might request that a job be printed on a single laser printer
serving a LAN with ten PCs. The server puts the client's print job in a queue
and prints it when the printer is free. If the client asks for a software
program or data, the server provides it. The LAN is generally installed for a
group of users who need to share something – a database, computer equipment,
and/or software. This LAN is more complex that the peer-to-peer network and is
usually more expensive. It does free the client workstation from performing any
LAN functions for other users.
