adresses, protocols and packets
what are they and how do they work?
Protocols
The communication itself is done via a network: a medium through which individuals computers are able to connect and, in doing so, able to share data. Yet the ability to connect to each other via the network is not enough to enable data sharing: the computers must be guided, instructed on how to share the data appropriately to ensure it is done so accurately. It is the job of the assigned protocol to provide this instruction.
MAC addressing
Stands for "Media Access Control Address,"A MAC address is a hardware identification number that uniquely identifies each device on a network. The MAC address is manufactured into every network card, such as an Ethernet card or Wi-Fi card, and therefore cannot be changed.
Because there are millions of net-workable devices in existence, and each device needs to have a unique MAC address, there must be a very wide range of possible addresses. each computer needs its own unique address for receiving data packets.
A network address serves as a unique identifier for a computer on a network. When set up correctly, computers can determine the addresses of other computers on the network and use these addresses to send messages to each other
DATA packets
On the Internet, the network breaks an e-mail message into parts of a certain size in bytes. These are the packets. Each packet carries the information that will help it get to its destination -- the sender's IP address, the intended receiver's IP address, something that tells the network how many packets this e-mail message has been broken into and the number of this particular packet.
there are many ways in which a data packet can be transferred to a computer, the hub will distribute the data randomly. Each piece of data must now go to each computer to see if it is the desired piece of data, this is a downfall because this can cause serious congestion. the switch will tell each piece of data the direct route to their desired destination. if this flow gets congested then this is where the router comes into place as it can control the flow of traffic.