Welcome back to the next instalment of our Introduction to Networking series. It's good to see you again! In this video, we're going to take a look at some of the different network types that we will see out there in the real world.
So as we discussed previously, networks are used to connect devices together, so they can share information and communicate with one another. These devices often need some sort of special networking equipment to connect them all together and to help direct the flow of traffic. Common types of network equipment include switches and routers, and we'll talk in much more detail about how they work in future videos.
The devices that connect to our networking equipment are usually called 'endpoints' or 'hosts'. Now these include computers, servers, printers and things like these. These are the devices that send and receive the bulk of the network traffic.
Now networks come in all different sizes. A network at home is an example of a very small network. These networks usually only have a few devices, so this is called a 'SOHO Network' or 'small office home office'.
These networks typically have a couple of computers, a printer, a few phones, maybe a tablet. Some devices may be connected to Wi-Fi and others may be cabled directly into a switch. Now this might be a good time for me to mention that people often say Hub when they mean Switch.
And you can see why of course, because the switch looks like a central point or a "hub" in the middle of the network. But please keep in mind that switches and hubs are actually different things. Hubs are a really old technology and there are very few hubs left outside of museums these days, while Switches, which replaced Hubs are far more common.
In a Soho Network, a router is used to connect to the internet. You will often find that the route,r switch and access point are all integrated into one single device, like the one you can see here. This is more common in a home network as they're cheaper to buy and they're often a lot smaller and require less cabling, for example, to plug them into power, so they take up less space, making them more convenient.
While a Soho Network will only have a few devices connected, a larger Corporation, such as a bank, will usually have hundreds of devices. We tend to call this an 'Enterprise Network'. The Enterprise Network may cover several floors in a building, they may also have several office buildings maybe even in different cities around the country or around the globe.
On a smaller scale, we have SMB Networks. That means 'Small to Medium Business'. This uses the same type of equipment as an Enterprise Network, but it's on a much smaller scale, and they tend to focus on using cheaper models of networking equipment.
An 'Internet Provider Network' on the other hand is a very large network. It's also called a 'Service Provider Network'. In addition to providing internet, a service provider will offer services to connect their different customers together.
So what do I mean by this, well let's consider that bank again. With offices all around the country, they will typically pay a service provider to provide links, or network connectivity, between all their branches. We'll talk a bit about that very soon.
When network devices are collected into a small area, we call this a 'LAN' or 'Local Area Network'. The term LAN can vary a little bit in how it's used, but it may refer to a very small network in a Soho Network. The Local Area Network will be the switch with the handful of devices that connect to it.
Or a LAN may be part of a bigger network such as an SMB Network. The network may have many switches, routers and access points depending on what they need. You might recall the bank that we spoke about earlier.
They would likely have offices with several floors. As a whole, this building's network could be considered to be a LAN. Or more likely, the network will be broken up into smaller, more manageable parts.
Perhaps there's a small network on each floor that are connected together somehow. We could consider each of these floors to be a separate LAN. So you'll probably notice that the term LAN doesn't have a specific definition.
The only important part that we really need to remember, is that it is the part of the network that is confined to a local area - which might refer to a small network at a single location or an entire large network at a single location. We can contrast a Local Area Network with another type of network called a 'WAN', or Wired Area Network. Think of that bank again.
Its network is going to be larger than just one building. As we've said before, banks have offices all over the country and sometimes all over the world. But even though they are far apart, these networks can still be joined together.
This part, the joining of these offices together, or joining of LANs together, is called the 'WAN'. This is the part of the network that covers a 'Wide Area'. In a simpler example, let's imagine that you work for a company that has an office in Sydney and another office in Melbourne.
Now you need both of these networks to communicate with each other, so you would likely contact a Service Provider and ask them to connect your offices together for you. WANs are a topic all of their own, so we'll dive into them in far more detail in a later video. Just as in the last video I once again have some quiz questions to get your mind working.
As before, I have explanations on the website if you need them. Now I would like to take this opportunity to ask if you would consider being a Patreon supporter. This helps me to create more content like this.
You'll also get a few bonuses, such as detailed answers to these quiz questions in future videos, much like the ones you see here. And when we get further in, some extra configuration details, Labs, that you can download, which we'll see more of later on. But whether you would like to use Patreon or not, I would like to invite you back to our next video, where we continue our networking journey.
In this video we're going to start to delve deeper into network cabling.
