Terms like in and land should be in my opinion pretty straightforward for people who are approaching
the security plus exam.
However there are lots of network topology concepts that are on the test.
So what I'd like to do in this episode is just take a few minutes and I use the word review if it's
new to you.
You get to learn something but the different types of network topologies.
Now before we get started Make sure you understand that a network topology is basically the actual organization
of a network in terms of how is the data moving around and the best way to get started with this is
to begin with the most basic of typologies the local area network or Lan as you see in this diagram
what we have is a number of computers and all of these computers are connected together to one box called
a switch.
Now keep in mind it doesnt have to be one switch.
There could be two or three switches and it doesnt have to be just a few computers it could literally
be hundreds and hundreds of computers.
But what's important is we look at this is that all of these computers are connected into what we call
a broadcast domain.
Now when I say a broadcast domain all I'm saying is that if an individual computer sends out a broadcast
all of the other computers that hear that broadcast are members of the broadcast domain.
So that is a classic local area network.
Now what we can do here is we can extend that Lan let's say for example we take that one land and break
it up into two three four five six different lands.
We interconnect these with one or more routers to generate what we call a wide area network or a way
in a wide area network.
Absolutely.
Have at least two local area networks and at least one router.
However we can scale this up if we want to.
Now imagine all of the different wide area networks that are in the Houston Texas area.
So if we scale this up here's Houston Now that said we've got all of these wide area networks that are
within Houston and even these wide area networks can connect together to create what we call a metropolitan
area network.
Now you've got to be careful here that metropolitan area network is also a wide area network a wide
area network that connects to other wide area networks is still a wide area network.
What makes it a metropolitan area network is that it spans a city.
Now you could have a lot of variations of this.
You can have campus wide networks you can have county networks so the geographical space just gives
you an idea where the interconnections are taking place.
In fact let's scale this up even more.
Now I know some you folks aren't in the US but here's the continental United States.
And let's scale up all of these weapons all over the United States and then start to connect these guys
together.
What we've generated down folks is the Internet.
And I guess I should extend this worldwide now and even in into outer space the International Space
Station they have a really good Internet connection as well.
So what you're doing is you just keep connecting winds and connecting winds and connecting winds until
you completely cover the entire world and you get the Internet now there's a little more to it than
that.
The other thing you got to keep in mind is that the protocol which runs the Internet is TCAP IP TCAP
IP is free it's extremely well-known and anybody can use TZP IP even if you're not on the internet as
long as you're using legitimate IP addresses like Piers IPV fortress.
Or how about an IP V-6 address if you're using the TCAP IP stack and you're making your own way in or
when or whatever you want.
You are now creating the intra net.
So an intra net is nothing more than a private network which still runs on TCAP IP.
Now we can take this one step further and here is my internet but way out somewhere I've got.
In this case some vendor who needs access to my databases or something like this.
So I give that vendor a Internet connection into my network so that they can do whatever they need to
do.
And that's a great example of an extra net.
Now again hopefully for most you guys this is very much a review episode but do keep in mind on the
security plus it will throw these terms out hot and fast.
These are not the types of things you want to stall on when you're going through some challenging security
plus questions
on.