What are Network Components? 10 Basic components of the network.

Network components are the devices which work together to establish a complete network. So, here we can say that every networking devices is the network components.

So, in this blog, we will know about some network components and some protocols with which a network work.

Contents

1. What is a network component?
2. 10 Basic components of the network
3. Protocols

What is a network component?

• Already we know that the networking devices are the network components. It can be wireless or wired devices.
• Internet is a combination of computer networks. And all the computer networks are work with the help of different types of network components.
• For Example – Computers, Hub, Router, etc.

10 Basic components of the network

Sender & Receiver

• Simply, the sender is a device which sends the data to any other device. 
• And the receiver is a device which receives data from any other device in its network.
• A sender can be a receiver and vice-versa.
• For example, a device-D is sending a message to a device-E. Now here device-D is the sender and device-E is the receiver.
• After this, when device-E will reply to device-D, at that time device-E will be sender and device-D will be the receiver.
•  

End Point & NIC

• So Physical Network Components includes End Points like a personal computer, mobile, tablet, servers, printers, etc.
• Severs are used as data centres used to store data from which other devices retrieve data.
• So, here End Point can either retrieve or provide data.
• Physical Components also includes the Network Interface Card (NIC). It is a device which sends the user request to the server.
• For example, if someone typing www.google.com in his browser then first NIC will give the request to the Google server. 
• All Endpoints have their own NIC. It may be wired or wireless.
• NIC can convert data to Electrical signal, Light signal and Radio signal.

Network Media & Connectors

• Next Network Components is Network Media. It provides a way through which one data from a NIC can transfer to another NIC. 
• Also, we can say it is the medium which carries data from one place to another.
• It may be a LAN cable, Optical fibre and Air to transfer the electrical, light and radio signal respectively.
• So, it is of two types: – 1. Wired media and 2. Wireless media
• In wired media, we use all type of physical cables as the medium of data transfer.
• And in wireless media, we use sensor devices as the medium.
• The Connectors are another network component.
• LAN cables are connected to NIC with the help of the connecter called RJ45 connector.
• So, we can say that connectors provide connection points for network media.
• The devices which are connected with the internet are using the Connectors and Network Media to complete the network.

Switch

• A Switch is also network components. It is a multi-port device or component which decides where the data have to send in a network.
• The switch has its storage device so that it can store data.
• It maintains a Content-addressable memory (CAM) table. Where it records the port number of connected devices and their MAC address.
• It works in Data Link Layer.
• Every connected device has an individual path for communication with the other devices. So, the chances of data collision are less.

Router

• There are other network components called Router which makes a connection between two or more networks. It works in Wide Area Network (WAN).
• The router is also called as an Internetworking device. 
• It works in the Network layer.
• In every port, it has its broadcast domain.
• This component has storage, where it maintains a routing table.
• In the routing table, it records the data like the port number and network ID.

Hub

• Hub is also network components. It simply sends or receives data in a network in Bus Topology.
• The Hub has a single collision domain for which the chance of data collision is high. It is a WAN device. We can implement it in a small area.
• Hub isn’t an intelligent device. So that it always broadcast the data to every device in its network.
• It works in the physical layer and also it works in half-duplex. That means at a time only one device can send or receive data in its network. So, when one device sends or receives data in that network with Hub, other devices will remain silent at that time.
• Hub doesn’t have any storage device for which it can’t store any type of data like port number, MAC address and IP address.
• So that every time it has to broadcast the data to communicate in its network.

Server

• The server is a computer which stores data and also shares with other client computers.
• Also, we can say it is a remote computer to store and retrieve data.
• It can be a local area network and also a wide area network.
• Nowadays we using many types of servers like for maintaining the data of any website we use the webserver.
• For maintaining the data of mails, we use mail server.
• A single server can share data to multiple client devices or computers.
• For example, we are using the APACHE server software to make a server computer.

Protocols

Simply, protocols are the set of rules to make effective communication in a network. Both sender and receiver need to obey these certain rules. Protocols help us to send data securely.

Simply we can say that protocols help the network components to communicate securely.

For example: –

i) Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) 

• It is the backbone of all internet communication.
• This protocol defines how to establish communication so that the devices can exchange the data.
• It works with the Internet Protocol to send or receive the data packets.
• If a data packet lost any data during the communication then TCP will ask to resend the data.
• It works in the Transport layer.
• For example: – If a client requests an HTML data from the server, then the server will send it via Http protocol.
• Then the Http protocol asks TCP protocol to set the connection.
•  And TCP protocol will break the data into several packets. And asks the IP protocol to get the destination address.
• Then the TCP will deliver the packets and at the Endpoint or at the receiver device the packets will combine together to get the actual data.
• In TCP, error correction is easy.

ii) User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

• This protocol is similar to TCP. But the data packets are very small which are known as Datagram.
• It is not that much effective for error correction like TCP.
• It also works with the IP protocol called UDPIP.

iii) Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)

• We use this protocol to send mails.
• It sends E-mail data in packets.
• Also, to receive E-mails we use Post Office Protocol (POP).

iv) Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

• Simple we use this protocol to transfer the Hypertext Mark-up Language.
• It also uses TCP for transfer web pages.
• Another form of Http known as Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS).
• It provides data transmission in encrypted form. To prevent the leakage of sensitive data.

v) File Transfer Protocol

• It provides a method to copy a file from one computer to another computer.
• Nowadays web pages are hosted in an FTP server. When a user requests the data from the server, it directly transfers the data to the user’s computer with the help of internet.
• It uses TCPIP to enable data transfer.

Also you can know about some networking devices like Hub, Switches, Router, etc.

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Akhil Mondal

Always give your 100 per cent in your work… unless you’re donating blood.