The idea of networking is probably as old as telecommunications itself. Consider people living in the stone age, where drums may have been used to transmit messages between individuals. Suppose caveman A wants to invite caveman B for a game of hurling rocks at each other, but they live too far apart for B to hear A banging his drum. So what are A's options? He could 1)-walk over to B's place, 2)-get a bigger drum, or 3)-ask C, who lives halfway between them, to forward the message. The last is called networking.
Of course, we have come a long way from the primitive pursuits and
devices of our forebears. Nowadays, we have computers talk to each other
over vast assemblages of wires, fiber optics, microwaves, and the like,
to make an appointment for Saturday's soccer match.
In the following, we will deal with the means and ways by which this
is accomplished, but leave out the wires, as well as the soccer part.
We will describe two types of networks in this guide: those based on UUCP, and those based on TCP/IP. These are protocol suites and software packages that supply means to transport data between two computers. In this chapter, we will look at both types of networks, and discuss their underlying principles.
We define a network as a collection of hosts that are able to communicate with each other, often by relying on the services of a number of dedicated hosts that relay data between the participants. Hosts are very often computers, but need not be; one can also think of X-terminals or intelligent printers as hosts. Small agglomerations of hosts are also called sites.
Communication is impossible without some sort of language or code. In computer networks, these languages are collectively referred to as protocols. However, you shouldn't think of written protocols here, but rather of the highly formalized code of behavior observed when heads of state meet, for instance. In a very similar fashion, the protocols used in computer networks are nothing but very strict rules for the exchange of messages between two or more hosts.