Personal Area Network (PAN)

It is a network formed by connecting a few personal devices like computers, laptops,

mobile phones, smartphones, printers etc. All these devices lie within an approximate
range of 10 metres. A personal area network may be wired or wireless.For example, a
mobile phone connected to the laptop through USB forms a wired PAN while two smartphones
communicating with each other through Bluetooth technology form a wireless PAN or WPAN.

Local Area Network (LAN)

It is a network that connects computers, mobile phones, tablet, mouse, printer, etc.,
placed at a limited distance.The geographical area covered by a LAN can range from a
single room, a floor, an office having one or more buildings in the same premise,
laboratory, a school, college, or university campus. The connectivity is done by means of
wires, Ethernet cables, fibre optics, or Wi-Fi. A Local Area Network (LAN)

Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)

Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is an extended form of LAN which covers a larger
geographical area like a city or a town. Data transfer rate in MAN also ranges in Mbps,
but it is considerably less as compared to LAN. Cable TV network or cable based broadband
internet services are examples of MAN. This kind of network can be extended up to 30-40
km. Sometimes, many LANs are connected together to form MAN,

Wide Area Network (WAN)

Wide Area Network connects computers and other LANs and MANs, which are spread across
different geographical locations of a country or in different countries or continents. A
WAN could be formed by connecting a LAN to other LANs (Figure 10.7) via wired/wireless
media. Large business, educational and government organisations connect their different
branches in different locations across the world through WAN. The Internet is the largest
WAN that connects billions of computers, smartphones and millions of LANs from different
continents.

Network Device 1)Modem

stands for ‘MOdulator DEModulator’.refers to a device used for conversion between analog
signals and digital bits.to transmit data from
a sender to a receiver, or while browsing the internet, digital data are converted to an
analog signal The modem at the sender’s end acts as a modulator that converts the digital
data into analog signals.modem at the receiver’s end acts as a demodulator that converts
the analog signals into digital data for the destination node to understand. Figure 10.8
shows connectivity using a modem

2)Ethernet Card
Ethernet card, also known as Network Interface Card (NIC card in short) is a network
adapter used to set up a wired network. it acts as an interface between computer and the
network. It is a circuit board mounted on the motherboard of a computer The Ethernet
cable
connects the computer to the network through NIC. Ethernet cards can support data
transfer between 10 Mbps and 1 Gbps (1000Mbps). Each NIC has a MAC address, which helps
in uniquely identifying the computer on the network.

3) RJ45
RJ 45 or Registered Jack-45 is an eight-pin connector (Figure 10.10) that is used
exclusively with Ethernet cables for networking. It is a standard networking interface
that can be seen at the end of all network cables. Basically, it is a small plastic plug
that fits into RJ-45 jacks of the Ethernet cards present in various computing devices

4)Switch
A switch is a networking device (Figure 10.12) that plays a central role in a Local Area
Network (LAN). Like a hub, a network switch is used to connect multiple computers or
communicating devices. When data arrives, the switch extracts the destination address
from the data packet and looks it up in a table to see where to send the packet. Thus, it
sends signals to only selected devices instead of sending to all. It can forward multiple
packets at the same time. A switch does not forward the signals which are noisy or
corrupted. It drops such signals and asks the sender to resend it.

5)Repeater
Data are carried in the form of signals over the cable. These signals can travel a
specified distance (usually about 100 m). Signals lose their strength beyond this limit
and become weak. In such conditions, original signals need to be regenerated. A repeater
is an analog device that works with signals on the cables to which it is connected. The
weakened signal appearing on the cable is regenerated and put back on the cable by a
repeater.

6)Hub
An Ethernet hub (Figure 10.11) is a network device used to connect different devices
through wires. Data arriving on any of the lines are sent out on all the others. The
limitation of Hub is that if data from two devices come at the same time, they will
collide.

7)Gateway
As the term “Gateway” suggests, it is a key access point that acts as a “gate” between an
organisation's network and the outside world of the Internet (Figure 10.14). Gateway
serves as the entry and exit point of a network, as all data coming in or going out of a
network must first pass through the gateway in order to use routing paths. Besides
routing data packets, gateways alsomaintain information about the host network's internal
connection paths and the identified paths of other remote networks. If a node from one
network wants to communicate with a node of a foreign network, it will pass the data
packet to the gateway, which then routes it to the destination using the best possible
route.

Mesh Topology
In this networking topology, each communicating device is connected with every other
device in the network as shown in Figure 10.15. Such a network can handle large amounts
of traffic since multiple nodes can transmit data simultaneously. Also, such networks are
more reliable in the sense that even if a node gets down, it does not cause any break in
the transmission of data between other nodes. This topology is also
more secure as compared to other topologies because each cable between two nodes carries
different data. However, wiring is complex and cabling cost is high in creating such
networks and there are many redundant or unutilised connections.

Ring Topology
In ring topology (Figure 10.16), each node is connectedto two other devices, one each on
either side, as shown in Figure 10.16. The nodes connected with each other thus forms a
ring. The link in a ring topology is unidirectional. Thus, data can be transmitted in one
direction only (clockwise or counterclockwise).

Bus Topology
In bus topology (Figure 10.17), each communicating device connects to a transmission
medium, known as bus. Data sent from a node are passed on to the bus and hence are
transmitted to the length of the bus in both directions. That means, data can be received
by any of the nodes connected to the bus.

Star Topology
In star topology (Figure 10.18), each communicating device is connected to a central
node, which is a networking device like a hub or a switch, as shown in Star topology is
considered very effective, efficient and fast as each device is directly connected with
the central device. Although disturbance in one device will not affect the rest of the
network, any failure in a central networking device may lead to the failure of complete
network

MAC Address
MAC stands for Media Access Control. The MAC address,also known as the physical or
hardware address, is a unique value associated with a network adapter called a NIC. The
MAC address is engraved on NIC at the time of manufacturing and thus it is a permanent
address and cannot be changed under any circumstances. The machine on which the NIC is
attached, can be physically identified on the network using its MAC address. Each MAC
address is a 12-digit hexadecimal numbers (48 bits in length), of which the first six
digits (24 bits) contain the manufacturer’s ID called Organisational Unique Identifier
(OUI) and the later six digits (24 bits) represents the serial number assigned to the
card by the manufacturer. A sample MAC address looks like:

IP Address
IP address, also known as Internet Protocol address, is also a unique address that can be
used to uniquely identify each node in a network. The IP addresses are assigned to each
node that uses the IP for communication. if we know a computer’s IP address, we can
communicate with that computer from anywhere in the world. The initial IP Address called
version 4 (IPV4 in short),is a 32 bit numeric address, written as four numbers separated
by periods, where each number is the decimal (base-10) representation for an 8-bit binary
(base-2) number and each can take any value from 0 - 255. A sample IPV4 address looks
like: 192.168.0.178

The World Wide Web (WWW)

The World Wide Web (WWW) or web in short, is an ocean of information, stored in the form
of trillions of interlinked web pages and web resources. The resources on the web can be
shared or accessed through the Internet
•HTML – HyperText Markup Language. It is a language which is used to design standardised
Web Pages so that the Web contents can be read and understood from any computer. Basic
structure of every webpage is designed using HTML.
• URI – Uniform Resource Identifier. It is a unique address or path for each resource
located on the web. It is also known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL). Every page on the
web has a unique URL. Examples are: https://www.mhrd.gov.in,http URL is sometimes also
called web address

Domain name system :For each computer system hosting a website or web resourse is given
against its Ip Adress there names are called the domain or host name
DNS server :conversion of the domain name of each web server to its corresponding ip
address is called domain names resolution it is done through a server called DNS server.

) ATTRIBUTE: Characteristic or parameters for which data are to be stored in a relation.

Simply stated, the columns of a relation are the attributes which are also referred as
fields. For example, GUID, GName, GPhone and GAddress are attributes of relation
GUARDIAN.
ii) TUPLE: Each row of data in a relation (table) is called a tuple. In a table with n
columns, a tuple is a relationship between the n related values.
iii) DOMAIN: It is a set of values from which an attribute can take a value in each row.
Usually, a data type is used to specify domain for an attribute. For example, in STUDENT
relation, the attribute RollNumber takes integer values and hence its domain is a set of
integer values. Similarly, the set of character strings constitutes the domain of the
attribute SName
DEGREE: The number of attributes in a relation is called the Degree of the relation. For
example, relation GUARDIAN with four attributes is a relation of degree 4.
v) CARDINALITY: The number of tuples in a relation is called the Cardinality of the
relation. For example, the cardinality of relation GUARDIAN is 5 as there are 5 tuples in
the table.

Candidate Key
A relation can have one or more attributes that takes distinct values. Any of these
attributes can be used to uniquely identify the tuples in the relation. Such attributes
are called candidate keys as each of them are candidates for the primary key.

Primary Key
Out of one or more candidate keys, the attribute chosen by the database designer to
uniquely identify the tuples in a relation is called the primary key of that relation.
The remaining attributes in the list of candidate keys are called the alternate keys.

Foreign key
A foreign key is used to represent the relationship between two relations. A foreign key
is an attribute whose value is derived from the primary key of another relation. This
means that any attribute of a relation (referencing), which is used to refer contents
from another (referenced)
relation, becomes foreign key if it refers to the primary key of referenced relation.