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

Introduction

The tremendous growth of local area networks (LANs) into the organizational, corporate, and home networks in the last 20 years has shown that there is a need for individuals with networking experience, and that need will remain for a long time coming. The U.S. Department of Labor forecasts an increase of 58 percent in the network and system support job market by 2016. With that growth comes opportunities for individuals with networking knowledge to secure their future.

There are very few instances where a business is run without a network of some sort. Retail environments maintain inventory, report income, transfer personnel information, and many other functions are handled within a LAN. LAN-to-LAN communication, secure tunneling, encryption and authentication, and many other functions are now handled by specific nodes and application programs that are part of the network.

In the beginning, most LANs were created around a shared data communication channel. Although not very reliable, these networks laid the foundation for the LANs of today. In the late 1980s, LANs migrated from a shared medium to more standardized and reliable media. These were twisted pair cabling and the use of a node called a hub. End-user needs were also a driving force in some of the advancements made in all facets of networking technology. Today, the advancements made in areas related to networking are far superior than what one would have dreamed possible back in the days of punch card coding and ...