Essential Guide to Computing: The Story of Information Technology, The

Network Generations

There are a variety of ways to describe network generations. This book will use the most common, which means 1) terminal-host for systems with mainframes or minicomputers supplying all of the intelligence to dumb terminals; 2) client-file server for the generation with a dumb host and smart PCs; and 3) client-server for systems in which all elements of the network have considerable intelligence. We'll then describe the various approaches to client-server.

Terminal-Host

The first generation of computers worked exclusively in the terminal-host mode. A terminal, essentially a keyboard, video screen, and a little bit of circuitry, had no intelligence at all—no CPU, no DRAM, no hard drive or other form of storage. The central computer—first ...