Network Fundamentals and Types

A computer network is a collection of two or more computing devices that are connected together so they can exchange data and share resources. Those resources might be files, printers, an internet connection, processing power, or application services. Networking is one of the foundations of modern computing because almost every useful system today, from a school's shared drive to a global streaming platform, depends on machines talking to one another reliably. To reason about networks in an exam you need a clear vocabulary for the different kinds of networks and the models used to organize them.

Classifying networks by geographic scale

The most common way to categorize networks is by the physical area they cover. A Personal Area Network (PAN) is the smallest, spanning only a few meters aro