Computer Networking blog – excITingIP.com

Hallo Leute,

There are numerous blogs on various topics out there, but very few of them focus on the Computer Networking domain. excITingIP.com is not only a Computer Networking Blog but we also discuss about related enterprise IT technologies, here.

Computer Networking, as such is a very wide domain. Many people (outside this industry) think that Computer Networks are about Switches, Routers. and Cables. Well, that maybe partially true but any IT professional knows that Computer Networking is a very broad subject.

To get a nice overview about the Computer Networking concepts, you ought to read my introductory post on Converged Networks. If you are very new, click on the links below each image to get a basic introductory level explanation on the various components that make a computer network.

Yes people, Computer Networks are no longer about connecting Computers with Servers and Internet alone! A lot of exciting services like IP Telephony, Video Conferencing, Video Surveillance, Control systems, etc are converging to Ethernet/IP & hence are carried over Computer Networks these days!

It is something to connect a wireless router to your modem at home and call it a computer network and something else to understand the basics, concepts & standards that are employed to create an enterprise IT network. The difference between the two is like the difference between a toy plane and a Space shuttle!

More over, there are a lot of sub-categories associated with an enterprise network (just have a look at the category bars just below the logo on the top) and any IT professional these days needs to understand/ become familiar with all of them.

I mean, they are all interconnected to each other. They are like the various parts of a big puzzle, and the puzzle does not get completed unless all those individual parts fit to their place.

Consider this – You can create a computer network using Active Network Components & connect them all using Passive Network Components. But, you also need to give Wireless Network access to the mobile workforce and perhaps guests. If you have a computer network, you need to implement a solid Network Security strategy as well.

As I told you earlier, enterprise IT networks are beyond just data. Most of the Telephones run on the IP Networks & hence one needs to get familiar with Voice Over IP (VOIP) technologies. If voice is on the network, can video be far behind? Both Video Conferencing systems and Video Surveillance systems run Video Over an IP Network.

If there are so many services running over the Computer Network, there sure has to be a Storage Network to store all the data. The objective of all the systems connected to a Computer Network is either to connect to the Servers, or to connect to the Internet. So, we need to be familiar with Server Technologies & Bandwidth choices available to connect to the Internet.

Virtualization is an important technology that is getting increasing prominence in the Data Center & it goes much beyond Server Virtualization.

Wide Area Networks help connect multiple branches of a company. So, one needs to get familiar with the Network Optimization technologies to communicate with the dispersed global workforce or to effectively utilize cloud computing infrastructure.

What are the servers for, without the Applications they run? Most of the applications today are network based.

Since no single vendor can provide all the above services by themselves (even if they do, customers wouldn’t want them to!), the wonderful folks at IEEE, IETF & others have created Protocols – Network Standards, so that equipments from different vendors can easily inter operate with each other.

Well, that’s some long list ain’t it? 🙂

This Computer Networking blog – excITingIP.com gives an introduction/ overview of the various technologies that make up a computer network. No topic is covered in depth, but they are covered comprehensively enough so that IT professionals can gain a good understanding about Computer Networks and their applications.

Don’t try to read many articles in one go – you’d get tired! These articles were written over the last two years and hence would involve some efforts on your part to gather all the knowledge contained in them. I suggest that you select a category of your interest and go through a few posts at a time.

The best thing would be to subscribe to this blog with your email address in the sidebar box that says, ‘Get email updates when new articles are published’. If you submit your email address, you’ll be notified when ever a new topic is published here (along with a short summary) so that you can visit the site if you want to learn more about that topic. You can expect to get a maximum of four mails per week.

But a blog, by its nature is interactive. That’s why there is a comments section after every post. Please use it to extend the post/ give your feedback. If you think you want to write an article in this site, you can request to write a guest post here and I will publish it if its good.

Rajesh K , Administrator & Author – excITingIP.com