Routing and Routers Internet LAN

¶ … Internet and LANS

Overview love the internet. For example, I can't live without my daily emails and I am a big fan of music downloads and bargain shopping. Those individuals not in tune with what's currently happening all around us in regard to email, websites like KaZaA and eBay, or even the phenomena of file swapping for that matter may be a bit out of touch. The future of information technology is here right now on can be found on the internet. The bottom line is that the internet is really comprised of physical hardware and software known as routers and lots of Local Area Networks (LANs).

To get a fix on how the internet has changed the world, it is estimated that file swapping sites like KaZaA have more than one hundred sixty million people worldwide downloading at least one version of their software. Of those millions, over sixty million people worldwide, twenty-two million in the United States, are steady and loyal users of the KaZaA software. That is only one website. Humongous census figures like these create a demand for new and faster routers from companies like CISCO and Intel. This report will focus on the internet and try to explain how the internet works.

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to define how the physical aspects of the internet work. The true internet is a large serious of computers all linked together through a backbone system that if looked at closely could be considered nothing more than one big Local Area Network. Therefore, to explain and understand the internet one has to understand routers and LANs.

Introduction

This report is about LANS, the internet and routers. A local area network (LAN) is nothing more than a group of computers and other hardware devices (like printers, Palms, etc.) that shares a common communications line. Like the internet, individual computers can talk to each other using a common language (internet protocol, HTML, JAVA or any other agreed upon communications language). LANs generally share the resources of a single processor or server that decides which computer has the right of way on the communications highway. This decision making server could have special applications and data storage software that can be literally shared by multiple computer users - like KaZaA. A LAN therefore could serve as few as two or three users like in a home network or many as thousands of users in a University. When we tie all these networks together we have the internet.

Supporting Research

To provide an example which can be used as supporting research and even to simplify an explanation of routers and the internet, this report will implement a LAN and then connect it to the internet. We will need Transmission Facilities, Communications Hardware, Internet addressing and Routing Protocols.