Wireless or Wired Network?
Do you want the freedom of a wireless network, or do you want the security and reliability of a wired network? Both networks can provide you with great service and expandability, but each one varies in size, reliability, cost and speed. More ...
Data Center Networking
In recent years, companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have built massive data centers, each housing tens to hundreds of thousands of hosts, and concurrently supporting many distinct cloud applications. Each data center has its own data center network that interconnects its hosts and interconnects the data center with the Internet. More ...
The Secret of Maintaining Your Fiber Optic Network
During fiber optic network installation, maintenance, or restoration, it is also often necessary to identify a specific fiber without disrupting live service. This battery powered instrument looks like a long handheld bar and is called fiber identifier or live fiber identifier. More ...
The IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Standards
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The IEEE sets up committees to define industry standards. The IEEE 802 committee sets the standards for networking. The IEEE subcommittee 802.3 sets the standard for Ethernet. More ...
System Area Network Interface Cards
Whereas the standard network may use twisted-pair cabling, the System Area Network may use separate fiber-optic cabling. System Area Network interface cards are special high speed circuits that provide communications between the servers over the System Area Network. More ...
Ethernet Bridges
Unlike a hub, which blindly forwards received bits, a bridge makes intelligent forwarding decisions based on the destination MAC address in a frame. More ...
VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) Basics
"A VLAN is a LOGICAL network where devices might be on separate PHYSICAL networks. The purpose of implementing a VLAN is to improve the performance of a network or apply security features. More ...
VPN (Virtual Private Network) headend or Concentrator
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) uses 'tunneling', a process by which secure, encrypted packets are sent over a publicly shared network. More ...
Understanding Optical Fiber Types
Two major types of optical fibers exist for communication systems: multimode and single mode. Multimode fiber can carry many modes of light rays, while single mode fiber can only carry one mode of light ray. More ...
Network Topologies
The physical arrangement of the cables, computers and components is referred to as the networks topology. There are five basic topologies, bus, star, ring, mesh, and wireless. More ...
Network Broadcast Storms
When a switch receives a broadcast frame the switch floods the frame out all switch ports other than the port on which the frame was received. Because a layer 2 frame does not have a TTL (Time to live) field, a broadcast frame endlessly circulates through the Layer 2 topology. More ...
Wireless Network Vlans - How to Implement Wireless Vlans
Wireless access points operate as bridges with no routing defined anywhere on the wireless network segment. VLANs are defined on the wired switches and mapped with specific SSIDs at each access point. The wireless client associates with a specific SSID which in turn will map client with membership in a specific VLAN. More ...
Frame Relay WAN Protocol
Frame Relay is WAN protocol and operates for LAN internetworking at data link layers. It is a packet-switched technology designed for swift digital transmission of data. Data integrity is not guaranteed and packets are discarded during network congestion. More ...
