Chapter 2

Overview of Networking Components

Every network includes different components that connect them together. Although it’s important to understand how each of these components works individually, it’s easier to grasp the details if you first understand how they work together.

This chapter presents a big-picture view of all the components and how they work together. It starts by explaining basic transmission methods used within networks such as unicast, broadcast, and multicast. It also introduces basic hardware components, but later chapters such as Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 cover some of these hardware components in much more depth.

A network uses protocols as the rules of communication, and this chapter introduces the basics of network protocols. It also introduces some basic network zones such as the Internet, an intranet, an extranet, and perimeter networks.