In the last lecture, I told you that I'll be defining the terms that I used so far, which are workstations,
servers and hosts.
So in this lecture, we will see the common network components to the four star workstations.
Workstations are often seriously powerful computers that run more than on one central processing unit,
that is CPU and whose resources are available to other users on the network to the access when they
need.
With this much power, you might think that I am distri being a server, not quite, because there's
an important difference between these devices that I'll be covering in the next section.
Workstations are often employed as systems that end users use on a daily basis.
Not do not confuse workstations with clients because people often use the terms, workstation and client
interchangeably in colloquial terms, this isn't a big deal, right?
We all do it, but technically speaking, they are different.
A client, the machine is any device on the network that only asks for access to resources like a printer
or other hosts from a server or powerful workstation.
Now the terms workstation client and hosts can sometimes be used interchangeably.
You have to keep this in mind.
Computers have become more and more powerful and the Tome's have become somewhat fuzzy because hosts
can be clients, workstations, servers and more.
But the term host is used to describe pretty much anything that takes an IP address.
Next up is servers, servers are also powerful computers, they get their name because they truly are
at the service of the network and run specialized software is known as the network operating system
to maintain and control the network.
In a good design that optimizes the network's performance, servers are highly specialized and are there
to handle one important labor intensive job.
This is not to say that a single server can't do many jobs, but more often than not, you'll get a
better performance if you dedicate a server to single tasks.
As we all know, a client asks for resources and server provides those resources to the client.
Now we'll have a look at a different types of common soldiers that you may come across.
First is the file server, which stores and dispenses files.
Next is email server.
The networks post office, which handles all the e mailing functions.
Then is the server which manages printers on network.
Web server manages Web based activities by running hypertext transfer protocol that is HTP for storing
Web content and accessing Web pages.
Do not worry, I am going to cover all the protocols in upcoming sections.
Then comes application server, which manages network applications, and lastly, proxy server, which
handles tasks in the place of other machines on the network, particularly an Internet connection.
As I said, servers are usually dedicated to doing one specific important thing within the network.
It is not always true.
Sometimes they have more than one job, but where the servers are designated for more job or single
job, it is the job of network administrator to decide depending upon the requirements of the organization
or the clients.
And no matter what, they will also have a number of blind machines, irrespective of whether a server
is dedicated for a single job or multiple job.
And lastly, hosts.
Now, this can be kind of confusing because when people refer to hosts, they really can be referring
to almost any type of networking devices.
If you ask your friend what is the host, he may say a host is, which has a computer device which has
servers and blah, blah, blah.
So it is quite confusing.
But if you dig a bit deeper, you'll find that usually this term comes up when people are talking about
resources and jobs that have to do with the transmission control protocol or the Internet protocol.
That is the TCP IP protocol.
We will be having a brief section on TCP IP protocol in one of the sections.
And because now the host means any network devices that has an IP address.
Yes, you will hear the I.T. professionals throw this term around pretty loosely.
But for many certification exams stick to the definition of being a network device which has an IP address.
Now, here's a bit of background regarding was the name host, uh, comes back from the Jurassic period
of networking when those dinosaurs, known as mainframes, were the only intelligent devices able to
roam the network.
These were called hosts.
Whether they had TCP IP functionality or not, it is not known in that beyond a bygone age.
Everything else in the network scape was referred to as dumb terminals because only the mainframes that
is hosts were given the IP address.
And from then, hopes are defined as devices which have an IP address.
So in this lecture, we saw three different terms network components, the first being the workstations,
then servers and finally hosts in the next lecture will see something about then that is a wide area
network.