Hey what's up guys welcome to CertBros
In this video we're going to be talking about computer networks
OK, so what is a computer network?
Well first let's break it down. What is a network?
The definition of a network is a group or system of interconnected people or things
So it would be fair to say, a computer network would be a group or system of interconnected computers. Right?
and that's exactly what it is. A computer network is anything where more than one computer is connected to each other
Traditionally a computer network would consist of desktop computers servers printers etc
But these days we live in a connected world
We still have desktops, servers, printers, but we now have a vast number of smart devices connected to our networks as well
Most of you will have a mobile phone, maybe a tablet. Security cameras. Even smart lights are found on networks these days.
And the list really does go on and on
So let's take a look at some basic networks and we can see what they look like
First, one that should be familiar to most of you
Here we have a switch, a router, a wireless access point, a desktop and a phone, all connected to the same network
This is a pretty common home setup.
It's worth noting that in most home networks, the switch and wireless access point will be built into the Rooter
Generally speaking any network in a single area is called a local area network or LAN
The LAN is usually connected to the outside world using a socket in the wall that your internet service provider has installed
This socket connects you to something called the wide area network or WAN
the purpose of a WAN is to connect separate local area networks together
The most obvious example of a one would be the internet however businesses might have
private WANs to connect multiple sites together
So now let's look at a more business type network
So we have all of our office computers and these would usually plug into a wall or floor socket
And these sockets will have cables either running through the floor or the ceiling back to a special room called a wiring closet
This room might also be called a patch room or a server room
In the wiring closet all of these devices will connect to a stack of switches
which are mounted onto racks depending on the size of the network
there may be multiple wiring closets which all connect to each other. Say for example on different floors
Keep in mind though this has been simplified to give you a general idea
lastly, we'll look at another type of network that might not be so obvious
Now, I said before I'm sure you all have smartphones of some sort
Now, these phones generally have internet
access via 3G, 4G and even 5g
Well you can think of these as basically a giant wireless network for your phones
Somewhere close to you there will be a
giant tower that allows you to connect and get internet access
The closer you are to these towers the better the connection is likely to be
So these are just some common network types and really just an introduction to some
basic networking devices.
So the next logical question is why. Why do we need networks?
well let's imagine life without networks for a second
If we want to print a document we would need to directly connect a printer
which is fine
but what if we have multiple computers?
we would need multiple directly connected printers, right?
Which isn't so fine
The beauty of a network is we can share resources.
if I have a file and I want to send it to someone I can.
They can also share the file with everyone else
we can have shared printers that everyone can use. We can even have servers that could store these files for us
Of course, file sharing and printing is just one example
but this could be pretty much anything. And all of this even before we
start talking about the internet, which by the way, is just a giant network
with the internet, we can search for anything we want
we literally have the world's knowledge at our fingertips
We have Email
We can message our friends telephone calls over the
We can use hosted computing
Telephone calls over the internet
and of course, awesome YouTube content
So networking has changed the world and how we live in it
It's a topic I still get excited about and there's no
shortage of new things to learn. We'll go over a lot of this in more detail as we go
This video is part of our full CCNA course which can be found in the description
So please feel free to go and check that out
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other than that, thank you for watching