Introduction to networks

The advent of computers has had a profound impact on society. These mechanical brains can carry out most jobs today in almost all sectors from medicine, education, aviation, retail, manufacturing, entertainment, communication, science and technology, research, aerospace, banking, space exploration, weather forecasting, and business transactions—the list is endless.

Computers have evolved a long way from the machine that Charles Babbage invented to the machines we see today. Much of it has been possible by the technological advances in semiconductor technology, which has made computers sleek, faster, and cost-effective. However, computers would not be as useful as they are today, if they were "egoist machines" not talking to one another, creating islands of excellence.

Businesses felt the need to leverage computing power across domains, and had a strong desire to automate the process to reduce manual dependencies. This acted as the driver for the evolution of communication networks that would enable communication between standalone computers. This ability to network computers has made them much more effective and acceptable in modern business.

As businesses evolved, and became more competitive, information and communication were regarded as among the most important factors that define the success of an organization, and hence the channels of carrying this information and communication became the lifelines of the organization. With the ever-increasing use of computers for carrying out most of the tasks in an organization, the information flow and communication between computers is becoming as important, if not more so, than between humans.

Early computer networks used different protocols such as DECnet, SNA, NetBIOS, and IPX to make computers communicate with each other. Although this facilitated networking, most of the protocols were proprietary, thereby limiting connectivity between machines from different vendors. Computer networking was fraught with cost inefficiencies, and interoperability issues because of the lack of a standard networking protocol that could be used across all vendors. Fortunately, the success of the ARPANET and the internet gave a big impetus to TCP/IP protocol, and the wide acceptance of the TCP/IP protocol stack among home and enterprise users forced many vendors to implement the stack on their devices. This changed computer networking and brought it to the levels of standardization and plug and play nature that exists today.