Acing the CCNA Exam, Volume 1

2 Network devices

This chapter covers

• The definition of a network
• Types of network devices, including clients, servers, switches, routers, and firewalls

This chapter is a high-level introduction to networks and some of the different types of devices that compose them. After looking at what a network is, we will examine clients, servers, switches, routers, and firewalls. We will look at the basic roles of each of these types of devices in a network, but we won’t get into any details about how they actually perform these roles—we’ve got the rest of the book to do that! By the end of this chapter, you will be able to identify each of the network devices in figure 2.1 and briefly explain their respective roles.

Figure 2.1 An enterprise network ...