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INDEX

1. Introduction 2

2. MAC address..2

3. NICs (Network Interface Card)..3
Functions
4. Hub..5
Types of Hub
Benefits of Hubs
5. Switch8
Types of switches
6. Routers...10
Routing Table
7. Gateway...12
8. Conclusion...14
9. Bibliography15



















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INTRODUCTION

Network devices are components used to connect computers or other
electronic devices together so that they can share files or resources like printers
or fax machines. Devices used to setup a Local Area Network (LAN) are the most
common type of network devices used by the public. A LAN requires a hub,
router, cabling or radio technology, network cards, and if online access is desired, a
high-speed modem.

In a network, one computer is designated as the server, and the others,
clients. The server is connected to an external hub, which the clients are also
connected to. Now that the computers each have one foot in a common electronic
door (the hub), they can use the hub to pass signals back and forth. To direct these
signals, the hub contains a device known as a router. The router is the equivalent of
an electronic traffic cop that handles data traffic between the computers.

All but the most basic of networks require devices to provide connectivity
and functionality. Understanding how these networking devices operate and
identifying the functions they perform are essential skills for any network
administrator and requirements for a Network+ candidate.
This chapter introduces commonly used networking devices, and, although it
is true that you are not likely to encounter all of the devices mentioned in this
chapter on the exam, you can be assured of working with at least some of them.
MAC address
A media access control address (MAC address) is a unique
identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical
network segment. MAC addresses are used as a network address for most IEEE
802 network technologies, including Ethernet. Logically, MAC addresses are used
in the media access control protocol sub layer of the OSI reference model.
MAC addresses are most often assigned by the manufacturer of a network
interface controller (NIC) and are stored in its hardware, such as the card's read-
only memory or some other firmware mechanism. If assigned by the manufacturer,
a MAC address usually encodes the manufacturer's registered identification
number and may be referred to as the burned-in address . It may also be known as
an Ethernet hardware address , hardware address or physical address. This can be


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contrasted to a programmed address, where the host device issues commands to the
NIC to use an arbitrary address.
A network node may have multiple NICs and each must have one unique
MAC address per NIC.
MAC addresses are formed according to the rules of one of three numbering
name spaces managed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE)
A MAC address is a unique 48-bits address that is burned into each network
interface or more specifically, directly into the PROM chip on the NIC. The
number must be unique, as the MAC address is the basis by which almost all
network communication takes place.
Different types of network devices are explained as below:
NICs (Network Interface Card)
Network Interface Card, or NIC is a hardware card installed in a computer
so it can communicate on a network. The network adapter provides one or more
ports for the network cable to connect to, and it transmits and receives data onto
the network cable.

Wireless Lan card


Every networked computer must also have a network adapter driver, which
controls the network adapter. Each network adapter driver is configured to run with
a certain type of network adapter.








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Network card


Functions
Network interface adapters perform a variety of functions that are crucial to
getting data to and from the computer over the network.
These functions are as follows:
Data encapsulation
The network interface adapter and its driver are responsible for building the
frame around the data generated by the network layer protocol, in preparation for
transmission. The network interface adapter also reads the contents of incoming
frames and passes the data to the appropriate network layer protocol.

Signal encoding and decoding
The network interface adapter implements the physical layer encoding
scheme that converts the binary data generated by the network layer-now
encapsulated in the frame-into electrical voltages, light pulses, or whatever other
signal type the network medium uses, and converts received signals to binary data
for use by the network layer.

transmission and reception
The primary function of the network interface adapter is to generate and
transmit signals of the appropriate type over the network and to receive incoming
signals. The nature of the signals depends on the network medium and the data-
link layer protocol. On a typical LAN, every computer receives all of the packets
transmitted over the network, and the network interface adapter examines the
destination address in each packet, to see if it is intended for that computer. If so,
the network interface adapter passes the packet to the computer for processing by
the next layer in the protocol stack; if not, the network interface adapter discards
the packet.




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Data buffering
Network interface adapters transmit and receive data one frame at a time, so
they have built-in buffers that enable them to store data arriving either from the
computer or from the network until a frame is complete and ready for processing.

Serial/parallel conversion
The communication between the computer and the network interface adapter
runs in parallel, that is, either 16 or 32 bits at a time, depending on the bus the
adapter uses. Network communications, however, are serial (running one bit at a
time), so the network interface adapter is responsible for performing the
conversion between the two types of transmissions.

MAC:
The network interface adapter also implements the MAC mechanism that the
data-link layer protocol uses to regulate access to the network medium. The nature
of the MAC mechanism depends on the protocol used.


HUB
Networks using a Star topology require a central point for the devices to
connect. Originally this device was called a concentrator since it consolidated the
cable runs from all network devices. The basic form of concentrator is the hub.


Hub is a broadcasting device. It works at the physical layer(1
st
layer) of the
OSI model. The hub is a hardware device that contains multiple, independent ports
simply receives the data from one port and sends the data to all the ports. Most
common hubs interconnect Category 3 or 5 twisted-pair cable with RJ-45 ends,
although Coax BNC and Fiber Optic BNC hubs also exist. Hubs offer an
inexpensive option for transporting data between devices, but hubs don't offer any
form of intelligence.




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Types of Hub:

On the basis of working and the performance networking hub is
differentiated into the three different types. The brief descriptions of these three
types are as follows


Passive Hub:

The first type of the networking hub is the passive hub. Passive hub does not
perform any particular function but it just behaves like a bridge between the cables
of connection and just receives the information and forwards it with out any
change in topology.

Active Hub:

Second type of the networking hub is the active hub. This type of hub is
quite similar to that of the passive hub but can perform the additional tasks. Active
hubs are those hubs that can work as connector between two regions but also has
ability to regenerate the information with the help of strong electrical signals. it is
also called as the multi port repeater. It helps in the communication and can
upgrade the properties of the signals before delivery.

Intelligent Hub:

The third and the last type of the hub that can perform the both functions of
the active and the passive hub is generally referred to as the intelligent hub.
Basically this hub provides the opportunity to increase the speed of networking and
also make the performance of the network efficient as compared to other devices.
Addition to their specific work intelligent hubs can also perform the different
functions that of routing, bridging etc.







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Benefits of Hubs:

There are many advantages of the networking computer hubs. Some of the
important benefits are as follows

1. With the help of hubs we can create a home network easily.
2. Hubs can also monitor the whole network in a real inexpensive way
3. It also provide the opportunity to the users to connect their old devices with
their hub drives

Ethernet Hubs
An Ethernet hub is also called a multiport repeater. A repeater is a device
that amplifies a signal as it passes through it, to counteract the effects of
attenuation. If, for example, you have a thin Ethernet network with a cable segment
longer than the prescribed maximum of 185 meters, you can install a repeater at
some point in the segment to strengthen the signals and increase the maximum
segment length. This type of repeater only has two BNC connectors, and is rarely
seen these days.

8 Port mini Ethernet Hub

The hubs used on UTP Ethernet networks are repeaters as well, but they can
have many RJ45 ports instead of just two BNC connectors. When data enters the
hub through any of its ports, the hub amplifies the signal and transmits it out
through all of the other ports. This enables a star network to have a shared medium,
even though each computer has its own separate cable. The hub relays every
packet transmitted by any computer on the network to all of the other computers,
and also amplifies the signals.
The maximum segment length for a UTP cable on an Ethernet network is 100
meters. A segment is defined as the distance between two communicating
computers. However, because the hub also functions as a repeater, each of the
cables connecting a computer to a hub port can be up to 100 meters long, allowing
a segment length of up to 200 meters when one hub is inserted in the network.


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Switches
Now a days Switches are mostly used in LAN due to their superior
throughput performance. Switch is a unicast device. It operates at data link layer
(2
nd
layer) of the OSI model.


Like hubs, switches are the connectivity points of an Ethernet network
.Devices connect to switches via twisted-pair cabling, one cable for each device.
The difference between hubs and switches is in how the devices deal with the data
that they receive. Where as a hub forwards the data it receives to all of the ports on
the device, a switch forwards it only to the port that connects to the destination
device. It does this by learning the MAC address of the devices attached to it, and
then by matching the destination MAC address in the data it receives. Figure
shows how a switch works.



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When switch receives data from one of the connected devices, it forwards
data only to the port on which the destination system is connected. It uses the
MAC address of the devices to determine the correct port. By forwarding data only
to the connection that should receive it, the switch can improve network
performance, by creating a direct path between two devices and controlling their
communication, it can greatly reduce the number of collisions on the network.

The net result of these measures is that switches can offer significant
performance improvements over hub-based networks, particularly when network
use is high. Irrespective of whether a connection is at full or half duplex, the
method of switching dictates how the switch deals with the data it receives.
The following is a brief explanation of each method:
Cut-throughIn a cut-through switching environment, the packet begins to be
forwarded as soon as it is received. This method is very fast, but creates the
possibility of errors being propagated through the network, as there is no error
checking.
Store-and-forwardUnlike cut-through, in a store-and-forward switching
environment, the entire packet is received and error checked before being
forwarded. The upside of this method is that errors are not
propagated through the network. The downside is that the error checking process
takes a relatively long time, and store-and-forward switching is considerably
slower as a result.
Fragment FreeTo take advantage of the error checking of store-and forward
switching, but still offer performance levels nearing that of cut through switching,
Fragment Free switching can be used. In a Fragment Free-switching environment,
enough of the packet is read so that the switch can determine whether the packet
has been involved in a collision. As soon as the collision status has been
determined, the packet is forwarded.




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Routers
Routers Are networking devices used to extend or segment networks by
forwarding packets from one logical network to another. Routers are most often
used in large internetworks that use the TCP/IP protocol suite and for connecting
TCP/IP hosts and local area networks (LANs) to the Internet using dedicated
leased lines.



Routers work at the network layer (layer 3) of the Open Systems
Interconnection (OSI) reference model for networking to move packets between
networks using their logical addresses (which, in the case of TCP/IP, are the IP
addresses of destination hosts on the network). Because routers operate at a higher
OSI level than bridges do, they have better packet-routing and filtering capabilities
and greater processing power, which results in routers costing more than bridges.






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Routing Table
Routers contain internal tables of information called routing tables that keep
track of all known network addresses and possible paths throughout the
internetwork, along with cost of reaching each network. Routers route packets
based on the available paths and their costs, thus taking advantage of redundant
paths that can exist in a mesh topology network.

Because routers use destination network addresses of packets, they work
only if the configured network protocol is a routable protocol such as TCP/IP or
IPX/SPX. This is different from bridges, which are protocol independent. The
routing tables are the heart of a router; without them, there's no way for the router
to know where to send the packets it receives.

Unlike switches, routers cannot compile routing tables from the information
in the data packets they process. This is because the routing table contains more
detailed information than is found in a data packet, and also because the router
needs the information in the table to process the first packets it receives after being
activated. A router can't forward a packet to all possible destinations in the way
that a bridge can.

Static routers: These must have their routing tables configured manually with all
network addresses and paths in the internetwork.

Dynamic routers: These automatically create their routing tables by listening to
network traffic.

Routing tables are the means by which a router selects the fastest or nearest path to
the next "hop" on the way to a data packet's final destination. This process is done
through the use of routing metrics.

Routing metrics which are the means of determining how much distance or time a
packet will require to reach the final destination. Routing metrics are provided in
different forms.

hop is simply a router that the packet must travel through.

Ticks measure the time it takes to traverse a link. Each tick is 1/18 of a second.
When the router selects a route based on tick and hop metrics, it chooses the one
with the lowest number of ticks first.


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You can use routers, to segment a large network, and to connect local area
segments to a single network backbone that uses a different physical layer and data
link layer standard. They can also be used to connect LAN's to a WAN's.


Gateway
A gateway can translate information between different network data formats
or network architectures. Gateways works at all levels of the OSI model.
Gateways will start at the lower level and strip information until it gets to the
required level and repackage the information and work its way back toward the
hardware layer of the OSI model. To confuse issues, when talking about a router
that is used to interface to another network, the word gateway is often used. This
does not mean the routing machine is a gateway as defined here, although it could
be.




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When a computer server serves as a Gateway node, the gateway node also
operates as a firewall and a proxy server. A firewall is a system created to prevent
unauthorized admission into a private network. A proxy server is located right
between a client application such as a web browser and the real server. The proxy
server sees if the client applications requests can be carried out by the real server.

Usually a gateway is associated with a router. A router is a device or
sometimes computer software that lets you know the next network data should be
sent to next. A router can be connected to two or more networks at a time, it
decides the next destination of the data based on it is comprehension of the
condition of the networks. A gateway is associated with a router because a router
which uses headers and forwarding tables to figure out where packets or data is
sent provides the path through which information is sent in and out a gateway.

So a gateway is one of the many ways we can communicate over the World
Wide Web. The gateway allows us to enter different networks on the internet so we
can transmit data back and forth. There's also software available where you can be
able to run several networks on a computer. As you have come to see by now
having a gateway on your computer has it's many benefits.













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Conclusion

In this networking devices, we learn about NIC, hub, switch, repeater,
router, bridge, brouters, gateway and MAC address.


















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BIBLIOGRAPHY

I collect the full information about Networking Devices through the
JETKING material of Networking Devices and internet from google websites.