Computer Network Device

A computer network device is any hardware component that supports or enables the transfer of data, or information among connected devices. When there is a collection of hardware components and other computers interconnected together by a communication channel, it is called networking. This connections allows the sharing of files and data among the connected devices. When more than one devices is able to carry out the process of sending or receiving data to or from another device with each process successfully carried out by a device, then the two devices involved are said to be in a network. With the hardware components or devices being connected together, once there is a transfer of information from one device to another or more, the term networking is accomplished.

Computer network can be classified according to a wide range of characteristics such as the medium used to transfer the data, the communication protocol, topology, and the organizational scope used to achieve the networking. Communication protocols are used to set the formats used in exchanging the information in a computer network. A well-known communication protocols are intranet, Ethernet, and internet. The internet communication protocol is mostly used, it defines a set of protocols for data communication between multiple networks in a local area. The internet of course is a global system of interconnected computer networks which uses internet protocol suits (TCP/IP) to provide internet connection to billions of people using computer around the world.

The internet has enables networking to be absolutely possible to almost everybody with an extensive range of information transfer, and service provision to private, public, academic, business, and government networks around the world. Computer networking is sometimes considered as a sub discipline of electrical engineering, computer engineering, system engineering, communication engineering, computer science, information technology, and so on.

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