Week 10: Clear: Communication Concepts

This weeks lecture was centered on communications and networks. A clear part of this lecture was the beginning of the lecture which was centered on different types of communication concepts. There are two types of communication channels, one which is physical and one that is wireless. The physical communication channel is a hard-wired line like fiber options, compared to a wireless channel which is infrared or radio transmitted. A network is a collection of devices connected together via communications devices and transmission media. There are all kinds of different networks which include PAN ( Personal area Network, LAN ( Local Area Network), MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network). Knowing these different types of networks can be very useful if one is trying to setup a particular network for a certain purpose.

The benefits of communications include facilitating communications, sharing hardware which increases productivity, and share software. Other benefits include sharing data and information and transferring funds. Some of the disadvantages of networks include cost, security threats, loss of user autonomy and lack of privacy. A popular network architecture is peer-to-peer where each computer has ability to share and use resources. Peer-to-peer programs have become quite popular over recent years due to sharing music and shareware. Popular peer-to-peer programs include Limewire, Napster and Ares. If one wishes to download one of these programs, they can all be downloaded at download.com or at the company's respective website. Knowing these different types of communications would prove to be very important in a business world. Computers revolve around communication with both the user and other computers. By knowing how communications and networks work, one can easily setup a network that many users can access and use. This would be great for companies around the world that have trouble communicating with employees or are having inefficient communication issues.