Communication over the network

Main characteristics of communication and the components that make such communication possible.

Today’s technologies allow us to make networks available when and where we need them. As the human network continues to grow, the network that connects it must too.

In previous articles we saw the devices that we can find in a network, well, in this article we are going to see the communication components.

It is important that we know the devices that make up said network, as well as the means that connect the devices, the messages that are transmitted and the rules and commands that are used for said purposes.

In the article about the elements of a network we saw the different devices, the types of networks, etc. but now we are going to look a little over the elements of a communication to better understand what comes next.

Broadly speaking, we can say that a communication is made up of a sender (the one who sends the message), a channel (the way the message is sent) and a receiver (the one who receives the message). Both the sender and the receiver can be people or devices.

An example of this would be: a computer sends a print request to the printer. The sender would be the computer, the channel would be the network and the receiver would be the printer.

Once we have seen this, we can go on to see what message communication is and how it is done.

message communication

To understand this we are going to be guided by the example of sending an email.

Let’s think of a mailing as we know communication, this would simply be that one computer sends a message to another. But what would happen if said message is lost on the way due to a network failure? Well, we would have to send it again, right? Well, to solve this problem, what we do in communication between computer networks is to send said message divided into multiple smaller packets in such a way that if the network fails, we only have to send the lost packet and not the entire message.

This process is called segmentation.

Segmentation allows us to send several messages at the same time (multiplexing) and that each packet of each message goes through different paths, making communication faster and more reliable.

The only disadvantage of said segmentation process is that when arriving at the receiver, all the packets have to be sorted before being delivered. (This is a complex process and requires some time.)

platform for communications

Networks use devices, media, and services.

The devices and means are usually all hardware elements (equipment, wiring, router, etc.) and the services are usually all the software necessary for the operation of the network, and the reading of the messages sent (processes, protocols, mail managers , web pages, etc.)

• End devices: in network terms we call the host end devices and they can be computers, network printers, scanners, etc. To distinguish one host from another we assign it an address that will be used by another host to specify the destination of the message. It should be noted that currently a host can act as a client, as a server or as both at the same time.
• Servers are hosts that provide information and services to other hosts on the network.
• Clients are hosts that request information from servers and display that information.
• Intermediate devices: They are those that allow the connection between hosts or even between networks (hubs, routers, modems, firewalls). They are the ones that determine the route of the messages taking as reference the address of the destination host. In addition to this function, it is in charge of notifying errors in the reception of messages, classifying and managing message priorities, and allowing or denying the flow of messages according to security parameters.
• Media: This is the channel through which messages are transmitted. We currently have three types of media: copper wire, fiber optics, and wireless transmission. The encoding of the message in each medium is different. You have to know how to choose the medium well since each one has different properties, advantages and disadvantages. Later we will see how to choose the right medium depending on the typography of the network and its needs.
• Services: this is the software used in each case. We can refer to the mail manager, to the tcp/ip protocol, to the web page… In short, any program that helps us to send and visualize our message.

In the following article we will see the types of networks that we can find today.