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Down To Earth Networking Help and Tips for The Home Networking User

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Networking Basics So You Can Get Started On Your Own Home Networking

Networking Basics
In Simple Down-To-Earth Instructions
So The Home Network User Can Understand!

Before we get into the basics and how networks are actually wired and the options you have for hooking up different computers, lets talk about some networking basics and in particular, the different levels at which a network operates.

Because it will help you understand what is actually going on here and see how there are several things that have to happen all at once in a home network and if any one thing in any of the networking levels fails, everything else above that level also fails. These networking basics can be very helpful when you get into troubleshooting networks.

As an analogy, we use a phone, something we are all really familiar with, maybe not the ones with wires on them anymore but lets imagine for now, that they still have wires connected to them so we can use it for this analogy. And since we are talking networking basics, I want to make sure we keep it very basic so we can understand and build of a good foundation.

In order to make a phone call, there are a couple things that have to happen all at once if there is to be a true phone network so to speak.

First thing I need is some connectivity, some kind of wire in the world that goes from my headset all the way through the world to the headset of the one I am calling. That is what we call level one, the physical wires. Now no message is being transmitted yet. I do have a network of wires but unfortunately it’s also a network with every other phone in the world.

So I need to some way to uniquely identify the caller I am calling. So what do you think I need to do next? Good guess! I have to dial their phone number and now their phone has been uniquely identified and I now have a connection with another phone out in the world over the wires.

Are you with me so far? So now that is two levels of connectivity. All wires connecting the network and then uniquely identifying another node (connection point or computer in our case) on the network.

Now, once we connected we now have to communicate so we need a language. So I am going to speak English into my side of the phone and hopefully the one on the other end will understand English and return English back to me.

Pop quiz… (don’t worry it will be easy)

How many levels of connectivity do we have now?

Answer…

We now have three levels of connectivity. 1) the wires, 2) we have uniquely identified another by their phone number, and 3) we have a common language in order to communicate.

The final level is simple that we all have to be on the same page or on the same subject so to speak.

In other words…

And again, it is really important that we understand that if one level fails, every other level above that level fails.

For example, back to our phone analogy, if I cut the wire on my phone, it doesn't matter that I know your phone number, it doesn't matter that we know the same language, and it doesn't matter that we are talking about the same thing, nothing else will be communicated because we are missing the lowest level of connectivity.

The same is also true if we have wires that connect our phones together, but if I don't have your phone number, then I still without connectivity. Or moving up the another level, if I have your phone number but I call you and you pick up the phone and answer “hola” that is, you started speaking Spanish, well I don’t know Spanish so we still can't communicate. Even though we do have the lower level connections.

See how easy it is to learn the networking basics, you are already talking in networking terms!

Well, finally and back to my point…

If I call you having all other levels connected and I want to talk about golfing, and you want to talk about shopping, well you guessed it; we are not going to communicate very well because we are on two different pages or subjects.

So what’s point of these networking basics?

When you build your own home networking, you will have the same issues of connectivity to deal with.

Let’s look at the four level of networking basics again:

1. The wires to create the connection between all the node or points
2. The unique identifier (phone number) that identifies one specific node or person you want to communicate with
3. A common language to communicate with (or a good translator, more on this later).
4. We need to communicate on the same subject

So, lets see if you graduated from networking basics training…

Where would be the logical place to start if you are going to build a home network?

Yup, take a look at the next page dealing with the wires and how the actual networking hardware and components can be wired together.

GOOD JOB!

Don't forget to bookmark this page so you can come back as often as you need to. Also, this is just the first steps, there are other pages here to help you get through the details of actually setting up your home networking. So enjoy!

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