They say that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and it’s not hard to see why. When you think about the incredible amount of advanced technology that makes it possible to view a Web site or send an e-mail to anyone in the world, it can definitely seem like magic. However, as we all know, there is no magic in the network, just basic engineering.
All networks are composed of computers that are connected to each other via a shared electrical connection (i.e., a wire). A computer can only communicate directly with other computers that share the same physical network. The magic of the Internet is that it makes possible communication between computers on separate physical networks. To do this, a router is needed to interconnect these networks. Routers are computers that contain some intelligence about the topology of the network and have the ability to forward (”route”) packets between the networks they are aware of. Without routers, your computer could not communicate with a computer on the other side of town, let alone on the other side of the world.
Figure One: Three separate physical networks linked with routers.
Figure One shows three separate networks. Because computers can only…
Please log in to view this content.
Not Yet a Member?
Register with LinuxMagazine.com and get free access to the entire archive, including:
