Application software is a set of one or more programs designed to carry out operations for a specific application. Application software cannot run on itself but is dependent on system software to execute. Examples of application software include MS Word, MS Excel, a console game, a library management system, a spreadsheet system etc.
Computer network
A computer network or data network is a telecommunications network which allows computers to exchange data. In computer networks, networked computing devices pass data to each other along data connections (network links). Data is transferred in the form of packets. The connections between nodes are established using either cable media or wireless media. The best-known computer network is the Internet.
Network computer devices that originate, route and terminate the data are called network nodes.[1] Nodes can include hosts such as personal computers,phones, servers as well as networking hardware. Two such devices are said to be networked together when one device is able to exchange information with the other device, whether or not they have a direct connection to each other.
Computer networks differ in the transmission media used to carry their signals, the communications protocols to organize network traffic, the network's size,topology and organizational intent. In most cases, communications protocols are layered on (i.e. work using) other more specific or more general communications protocols, except for the physical layer that directly deals with the transmission media.
Computer networks support applications such as access to the World Wide Web, shared use of application and storage servers, printers, and fax machines, and use of email and instant messaging applications.
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Contents
- 3 Network packet
- 4 Network topology
- 5 Communications protocols
- 6 Geographic scale
- 7 Organizational scope
- 8 Routing
- 9 Network service
- 10 Network performance
- 11 Security
- 12 Views of networks
- 13 See also
- 14 References
- 15 Further reading
- 16 External links
History
See also: History of the Internet
A computer network, or simply a network, is a collection of computers and other hardware components interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information. As of 2015 computer networks are the core of modern communication. Computers control all modern aspects of the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Telephony increasingly runs over the Internet Protocol, although not necessarily over the public Internet. The scope of communication has increased significantly in the past decade. This boom in communications would not have been possible without the progressively advancing computer network. Computer networks, and the technologies that make communication between networked computers possible, continue to drive computer the hardware, software, and peripherals industries. The expansion of related industries is mirrored by growth in the numbers and types of people using networks, from the researcher to the home user.
The chronology of significant computer-network developments includes:
- In the late 1950s early networks of communicating computers included the military radar system Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE).
- In 1959 Anatolii Ivanovich Kitov proposed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union a detailed plan for the re-organisation of the control of the Soviet armed forces and of the Soviet economy on the basis of a network of computing centres.[2]
- In 1960 the commercial airline reservation system semi-automatic business research environment (SABRE) went online with two connected mainframes.
- In 1962 J.C.R. Licklider developed a working group he called the "Intergalactic Computer Network", a precursor to theARPANET, at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
- In 1964 researchers at Dartmouth College developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System for distributed users of large computer systems. The same year, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a research group supported by General Electric and Bell Labs used a computer to route and manage telephone connections.
- Throughout the 1960s, Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, and Donald Davies independently developed network systems that used packets to transfer information between computers over a network.
- In 1965, Thomas Marill and Lawrence G. Roberts created the first wide area network (WAN). This was an immediate precursor to the ARPANET, of which Roberts became program manager.
- Also in 1965, Western Electric introduced the first widely used telephone switch that implemented true computer control.
- In 1969 the University of California at Los Angeles, the Stanford Research Institute, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah became connected as the beginning of the ARPANET network using 50 kbit/s circuits.[3]
- In 1972 commercial services using X.25 were deployed, and later used as an underlying infrastructure for expandingTCP/IP networks.
- In 1973, Robert Metcalfe wrote a formal memo at Xerox PARC describing Ethernet, a networking system that was based on the Aloha network, developed in the 1960s by Norman Abramson and colleagues at the University of Hawaii. In July 1976, Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs published their paper "Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks"[4] and collaborated on several patents received in 1977 and 1978. In 1979 Robert Metcalfe pursued making Ethernet an open standard.[5]
- In 1976 John Murphy of Datapoint Corporation created ARCNET, a token-passing network first used to share storage devices.
- In 1995 the transmission speed capacity for Ethernet increased from 10 Mbit/s to 100 Mbit/s. By 1998, Ethernet supported transmission speeds of a Gigabit. The ability of Ethernet to scale easily (such as quickly adapting to support new fiber optic cable speeds) is a contributing factor to its continued use as of 2015.[5]
