Networking Self-Teaching Guide: OSI, TCP/IP, LANs, MANs, WANs, Implementation, Management, and Maintenance

Chapter 3. Network Hardware and Transmission Media

	Men have become the tools of their tools.
	--Henry David Thoreau

Most Internet users don't understand the hardware and media used to give them the freedom they enjoy on the WWW. There are a lot of different types of nodes that serve specific purposes, as well as different transmission media types that connect network nodes together. The average Internet user is mainly concerned that they are able to send that important e-mail and have it get there, or that they are able to download the new episode of Survivor. For the average user, the Internet simply is there, and that is fine for them.

The same holds true in today's workplace. Almost every business uses a network in some form and in some capacity. Even if a worker does not interface with a computer, they are probably working off a printout that was generated electronically and often from a database that connects to. . .you got it—a network. As long as they have what they need to perform the functions they need to do, they don't care what it takes to get the data passed from one point to the next.

The fact that you are reading this book means you have a reason for learning how data is transmitted. That means you need to know the information in this chapter intimately.^[86] In later chapters, when we refer to a router, you need to recognize that name and know what it does.^[87] This chapter provides an explanation for most of the network hardware that is in use in networks today. Network ...