1.5 Summary of Session 1
In this session you’ve looked closely at a home network which you should now be able to identify as a local area network (LAN). You’ve also had an introduction to some of the tasks performed by a home gateway and how tasks involved in communication networks are organised in hierarchical layers. You’ve learned how to find information on your own home gateway and other connected devices, including their IP address. You’ve used an IP address and the ping command to test connections between different devices, but there’s a lot more to IP addresses, as you’ll see in the next session.
New terms
In this session you have met the following terms.
| ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) | A type of broadband communications technology used for connecting to the internet through the copper cables of the telephone network. |
| DNS (Domain Name System) | One of the functions of a DNS server is to locate websites when you’re browsing the internet. |
| Ethernet | The computer networking technology most used in local area networks. |
| home gateway | A device that enables a LAN and a WAN to communicate with each other. |
| IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) | A professional body involved in the development and use of technical products. |
| IP address | A numeric identifier that is associated with each device on a network and is unique for that network. |
| IP (Internet Protocol) | One of the two most important protocols used in the TCP/IP protocol suite (the other is TCP). |
| LAN (local area network) | A collection of computing devices, connected together in a fairly small geographical area. |
| MAC (media access control) | An alphanumeric address unique to each network device (also called the physical or hardware address). |
| packet | A data unit. |
| protocol | A set of rules for doing something. |
| protocol stack / protocol family | A collection of related protocols that work together to handle data in communication networks. |
| SSID (service set identifier) | The name to identify a Wi-Fi network used by devices wishing to connect to it. |
| subnet mask | A numeric addition to an IP address that provides information on how to interpret the address. |
| switch | A network device that connects other devices together. |
| TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) | One of the two most important protocols used in the TCP/IP protocol suite (the other is IP). |
| TCP/IP protocol suite | The name given to the suite of protocols used on the internet and most other computer networks. |
| WAN (wide area network) | A collection of computing devices, connected together in a large geographical area. |
| WLAN (wireless local area network) | A LAN that uses wireless connections. |
| WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) | A protocol used to protect wireless networks. |