Introduction to Local Area Networks

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What is a Local Area Network?

A local area network is a network whose
size is not large. For example, the size may
be a room, a department, a company, a
campus, etc.
A network that covers a place that is citywide is called a metropolitan network.
A network that spans states or countries is
called a wide area network.
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Why We Study Local Area Networks?

You are using local area networks (e.g., Ethernets,
wireless LANs, NFS, MWs neighborhood, etc.)
everyday and everywhere.
You better know them well.
This course is aimed to be self-contained. If you
have taken course, that is good. If not,
that is still OK. We will spend the first four weeks
on the basics that are covered in .
After taking this course, you will have hand-on
experiences of using and configuring a switch.
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How Is a Local Area Network

Implemented?

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A computer network physically is composed

of end hosts, intermediate routers/switches, and
transmission links. (like nodes and edges in a graph)
End host (PC)
Router/Switch
Link

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A computer network is used to transfer a piece of

data from one node (traffic source) to any other
node (traffic destination).
destination
source

data

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A computer network also needs protocols so that

different nodes can talk to and work with each other
to finish a job.
Error control protocols
Hey, your 3rd data is lost.
source

destination

data

Hey, you send

too fast!
Congestion control protocols
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Computer Networks Protocols Are

Very Complex
For examples:

Framing (PPP, SLIP)

Medium access control (Ethernet 802.3, WLAN 802.11)
Addressing (IP, Appletalk)
Routing (RIP, OSPF)
Error control (ARQ) and congestion control (TCP)
Quality of service (RSVP, Diffserv, IntServ)
Security (IPsec)
WWW (HTTP), FTP, Telnet, Bit-torrents (P2P)
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Protocol Layering Is Used To Manage

Complex Protocols

The ISO OSI seven-layer reference model

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The Internet TCP/IP Protocol Stack

application
transport
network
physical

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Why You Study Computer Networks

As A Student?
Learn how computer networks work today
As numerous protocols are emerging and fading out
rapidly, understanding protocol principles is far more
important than knowing protocol details.
E.g., instead of memorizing how frequently routers
exchange their hello messages and when to declare a
router is dead in RIP, it is more important to understand
why doing this protocol allows a router to detect that its
neighboring router is dead.

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Why You Study Computer Networks

As A Student (contd)?
Learn the real reasons behind the designs of todays
computer networks
Once you know the reasons, you can apply them to other
places.
E.g., Knowing why Ethernet uses Manchester encoding is
more important than knowing that Ethernet uses
Manchester encoding to encode signals.

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Why We Study Computer Networks

As An Engineer?
Try to achieve the following ideal goals:
A users data can be transferred from one node to any other
node reliably, in-sequence, and spontaneously.
A networks resources (e.g., bandwidth) can be efficiently
and fully utilized to reduce the operation costs.

However, sometimes these goals are conflicting,

which makes achieving these goals at the same time
very hard!
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Welcome to the Internet!

Internets topology

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