NETWORKING ENGINEERING

What TCP/IP is?
A network communications protocol is a set of formal rules that describe how
software and hardware should interact within a network. For the network to
function properly, information must be delivered to the intended destination
in an intelligible form. Because different types of networking software and
hardware need to interact to perform the network function, designers
developed the concept of the communications protocol.
TCP/IP is
recognized as a standard by major international standards organizations and is
used throughout the world. Because it is a set of standards, TCP/IP runs on
many different types of computers, making it easy for you to set up a
heterogeneous network running the Solaris operating system.
TCP/IP provides services to many different types of computers, operating
systems, and networks. Types of networks range from local area networks,
such as Ethernet, FDDI, and Token Ring, to wide-area networks, such as T1
(telephone lines), X.25, and ATM.
You can use TCP/IP to construct a network out of a number local-area
networks. You can also use TCP/IP to construct a wide-area network by way
of virtually any point-to-point digital circuit
TCP/IP is the commonly used nickname for the set of network protocols
composing the Internet Protocol suite. Many texts use the term “Internet” to
describe both the protocol suite and the global wide-area network. In this
book, the “TCP/IP” refers specifically to the Internet protocol suite; “Internet”
refers to the wide-area network and the bodies that govern it.

------The term local-area network (LAN) refers to a single network of computers
limited to a moderate geographical range, such as the floor of a building or
two adjacent buildings. A local-area network has both hardware and software
components.

-----Local-Area Network Media
The cabling or wiring used for computer networks is referred to as network
media.
In the Solaris LAN environment, Ethernet is the most commonly used
local-area network media. Other types of local-area network media used in a
Solaris LAN might include FDDI or Token Ring.