A network bridge is a device that divides a network into segments. Each segment represent a separate collision domain, so the number of collisions on the network is reduced. Also, because each collision domain has its own separate bandwidth, a bridge Read More …
Author: upravnik
Network hubs explained
A hub serves as a central point to which all of the hosts in a network connect to. It is an OSI Layer 1 device and has no concept of Ethernet frames or addressing – it simply receives the signal Read More …
Network devices
Let’s take a look at the network devices commonly found in today’s LANs.. Hubs A hub serves as a central point to which all of the hosts in a network connect to. A Hub is an OSI Layer 1 device Read More …
Unicast, multicast, and broadcast addresses
There are three types of Ethernet addresses: 1. unicast addresses Unicast addresses represent a single LAN interface. A unicast frame will be sent to a specific device, not to a group of devices on the LAN: The unicast address will Read More …
MAC & IP addresses
MAC address A Media Access Control (MAC) address is a 48-bit (6 bytes) address that is used for communication between two hosts in an Ethernet environment. It is a hardware address, which means that it is stored in the firmware Read More …
Ethernet frame
We have already learned that encapsulated data defined by the Network Access layer is called an Ethernet frame. An Ethernet frame starts with a header, which contains the source and destination MAC addresses, among other data. The middle part of Read More …
Ethernet explained
Ethernet is the most used networking technology for LANs today. It defines wiring and signaling for the Physical layer of the OSI model. For the Data Link layer, it defines frame formats and protocols. Ethernet is described as IEEE 802.3 Read More …
Encapsulation
The term encapsulation is used to describe a process of adding headers and trailers around some data. This process can be explained with the four-layer TCP/IP model, with each step describing the role of the layer. For example, here is Read More …
Wide area network
The term wide area network is used to describe a network that spans multiple geographic locations. Consider an example. A company has two offices, one in London and one in Berlin. Both offices have a LAN. If the company connects these Read More …
Local area network (LAN)
The term local area network (LAN) is commonly used to describe a network of devices in a limited area (a house, office, building…). This type of network is usually capable of achieving high data transfer rate (up to 10 Gbps!) Read More …