Hi, I'm doing a computer course at the moment, but I'm having trouble understanding some aspects of networking. 1) In a large business, i.e. 300 pc's accessing the internet, how is this achieved? I mean, surely they can't all share the same bandwidth? 2) Also in a large business, how would computers be joined? Would it be all computers in one network joined to a switch, all computers in another network connected to another switch (and so on for example 10 networks joined to 10 different switches) and then all the switches joined to a central switch, or is it done in another way? 3) Once again in a large business, if two networks wanted secure data flow between them, without passing through any other networks, but these networks must still be connected to all other networks (i.e. so all netowkrs, or departments are conected), would this be achieved by simply using a bridge between the two switches requiring privacy? Or perhaps a bridge between the networks - if this is the case can a network be connected to a bridge and a switch at the same time?
Hello, thanks for being honest that this is coursework. Because of that, I have a few minutes to spare and I'll try to help you out. You'll notice that I will point you to a lot of Wikipedia articles. This is because while I can point you in the right direction, I can't learn for you, now can I? Sure they can. They only need 1 public IP to get online at the same time; study up on NAT, it's an important concept. Also relevant are the concepts of routing and firewalling. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's pretty close. Normally, Layer-3 switches seperate big networks into smaller ones which are faster, more secure, and easier to manage than one huge network could be. In fact, with Windows machines, it would be logistically impossible to deploy a pure Layer-2, aka "flat", network of great scale due to technical limitations in that OS. There are several ways to do this, but I think you are referring to a VPN.
Hi, Thanks for the reply and the links. I've had a quick look at them and I think they'll answer my queries, hopefully :chk: I'm having such a hard time understanding how networks work in a real business situation as opposed to home use, but hopefully the info you gave me will set me straight. Thanks again
I've read through the link concerning the internet connection, but I have a question - what if one of the computers on the network is accessing the internet and the connection is 56kbps for example, downloading say a video file at 56kbps and another 5 computers on the network want to download other large files - would the 56kbps not be shared between these computers resulting in a slow connection for all?? Or does a router somehow provide 56kbps to all computers at the same time?
It would split up the 56Kb/s between the computers, it wouldn't provide each one with a 56Kb/s connection to the Internet as the maximum speed for the Internet connection is 56Kb/s. So if 2 computer were sharing and the network was set up to give each computer equal bandwidth the maximum bandwidth for each computer would be 28Kb/s.
I think the router shares the bandwidth differently depending on how many devices want access. Using NAT and a router, a home internet connection at 2mbps is shared very effectively.
