CompTIA A+ Hardware/Software – 11/3/2009

Today we took a look at basic networking topics.  Since almost all computing we do today has something to do with networking at some level, networking is actually a very important part of PC repair.  We discussed what a LAN, MAN and WAN are and what the similarities are between them.  We also looked at peer-to-peer distribution models and compared them to a client/server distribution model and discussed the pros and cons of each.  Next, I introduced the concept of topologies, there are four physical topologies (bus, star, ring and mesh) and two logical ones (star bus, star ring).

Next, I introduced the concept of the OSI model.  We didn’t dive too horribly deep into this, since we will cover this in depth next quarter in Network+ (just ask JD!), but for now, just be able to reproduce it.  We had a brief introduction into IP addressing and finally ended up the chapter talking about common network connectors.

The next chapter took networking concepts and went just a little further with them, exploring the security angle of things.  Our technology is so exposed to the rest of the world today, and its important to be able to know about the security technologies in place that are designed to protect us.

Homework:

• Chapter Eight Review Questions
• Chapter Nine Review Questions