What is a Computer Network?
A computer network is a set of computers connected together for the purpose of sharing resources. The most common resource shared today is connection to the Internet. Other shared resources can include a printer or a file server. The Internet itself can be considered as a computer network.
Computer Network Defined a computer network is a set of connected computers. Computers on a network are called nodes. The connection between computers can be done via cabling, most commonly the Ethernet cable, or wireless through radio waves. Connected computers can share resources, like access to the Internet, printers, file servers, and others.
Types of Network Connections
Computer networks can be broken down historically into is a technique of connecting computers. The most common topology today is a collapsed ring. This is due to the success of a network protocol called the Ethernet. This protocol, or a network language, supports the Internet, Local Area Networks, and Wide Area Networks.
Star Topology
A star topology is a design of a network where a central node extends a cable to each computer on the network. On a star network, computers are connected independently to the center of the network. If a cable is broken, the other computers can operate without problems. A star topology requires a lot of cabling.
Bus Topology
A bus topology is another type of design where a single cable connects all computers and the information intended for the last node on the network must run through each connected computer. If a cable is broken, all computers connected down the line cannot reach the network. The benefit of a bus topology is a minimal use of cabling.
Collapsed Ring Topology
A similar topology is called a ring. In this design, computers are connected via a single cable, but the end nodes also are connected to each other. In this design, the signal circulates through the network until it finds the intended recipient. If a network node is not configured properly, or it is down temporarily for another reason, the signal will make a number of attempts to find its destination.
The world's first computer printer was a 19th-century mechanically driven apparatus invented by Charles Babbage for his difference engine.This system used a series of metal rods with characters printed on them and stuck a roll of paper against the rods to print the characters. The first commercial printers generally used mechanisms from electric typewriters and Teletype machines, which operated in a similar fashion. The demand for higher speed led to the development of new systems specifically for computer use. Among the systems widely used through the 1980 were daisy wheel systems similar to typewriters, line printers that produced similar output but at much higher speed, and dot matrix systems that could mix text and graphics but produced relatively low-quality output. The plotter was used for those requiring high quality line art like blueprints.The introduction of the low-cost laser printer in 1984 with the first HP Laser Jet, and the addition of PostScript in next year's Apple Laser Writer, set off a revolution in printing known as desktop publishing. Laser printers using PostScript mixed text and graphics, like dot-matrix printers, but at quality levels formerly available only from commercial typesetting systems. By 1990, most simple printing tasks like fliers and brochures were now created on personal computers and then laser printed; expensive offset printing systems were being dumped as scrap. The HP Desk jet of 1988 offered the same advantages as laser printer in terms of flexibility, but produced somewhat lower quality output (depending on the paper) from much less expensive mechanisms.
