Standards and Protocols:
Standards and protocols
are required to govern the physical and logical connections between terminals, Computers
and other equipment. They are vital for data communications and computer
networking.
Typically, standard fall
into two groups official standards
(from national standards bodies) and defacto
standards established by common usage.
An early official
standard was the EIA RS232 for data transfer over wires (Electronic Industries
Association Recommended Standard).
Network Topology:
The topology defines how the devices (Computers, printers… etc) are
connected and how the data flows from one device to another. There are two
conventions while representing the topologies. The physical topology defines
how the devices are physically wired. The logical topology defines how the data
flows from one device to another.
Broadly categorized into
i) Bus ii) Ring iii) Star iv) Mesh