Chapter 6. Local Area Networking

This book uses terminology that comes from the domain of local area networking, and in this chapter, you’ll become familiar with the basics of local area network (LAN) components—the history of LANs, the key issues in the various architectures, and issues related to LAN interconnection and internetworking.

LAN Basics

In the early 1980s, when most businesses were still using networked mainframes, two changes took place in computing infrastructures. First, there was a general growth in the number of devices in organizations, which created traffic growth. Second, skilled, technically oriented users began sneaking their own workstations in to work, and they would ask the company’s MIS department to provide networking ...

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