1. By Mrs. Bushman With pictures from Microsoft Clip Art & Apple.com

2. The term “network” According to Dictionary.com a computer network is: Telecommunications, Computers. A system containing any combination of computers, computer terminals, printers, audio or visual display devices, or telephones interconnected by telecommunication equipment or cables: used to transmit or receive information. Basically, this means technology devices connected to each other.

3. What does this look like? This is what most computers look like. You have the “tower” or CPU and your monitor.

4. What if… You were to take your tower and connect it to another tower? You have a network! This type of network is called Peer to Peer, or P2P.

5. Does it have to be computer to computer? No. It can be computer to printer, computer to projector, and with Voice IP Phones, it can be a computer connected to a telephone!

6. Does it have to be in the same room? No. They can be in separate rooms in the same building, like we have here at school, or it could be connected to a computer in another building, such as our District office.

7. When your computer is connected to another within the same building… That type of network is called a LAN, or Local Area Network.

8. When your computer is connected to another in a different building… That is called a WAN, or Wide Area Network.

9. What is the type of cable used to get access to a network? The primary source to gain access to a network is through ethernet cables.

10. Also available… is a wireless system, where the signal is sent from a box that is connected to the network via ethernet cables. These are called Airports, Airport Extreme or Time Capsules.

11. From the ethernet cables… Then the data feeds into fiber optic cables for faster transmission speed.