CompTIA A+ 2009 Essentials (220-701): Networking

Hi! My name is ms.Baptise and I'll be your instructor for Networking. This course is one of a series of lectures on CompTIA A+ 2009 Essentials (220-701). Imagine working in an office 20 years ago with little or no computer equipment. It's hard to envision now, isn't it? We take for granted a lot of what we have gained in technology the past few decades. Now, imagine having to send a memo to everyone in the company. Back then we used interoffice mail; today we use e-mail. It used to take days to get a document to someone in a remote office, and now it may just take a few seconds. E-mail is an example of one form of communication that only became available due to the introduction and growth of networks. In this lecture, I'll discuss the basic concepts of how a network works, including the way it sends information, the hardware used, and common types of networks that you might encounter. It used to be that in order to be a PC technician you only needed to focus on one individual computer at a time. In today's environment, though, you will in all likelihood be asked to troubleshoot both hardware and software problems on existing networks.

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If the material in this course interests you, you might consider studying for, and eventually taking, CompTIA's Network+ exam. It is a non-company-specific networking certification similar to A+, but for network-related topics.

Lesson 2. Networking Principles

Stand-alone personal computers, first introduced in the late 1970s, gave users the ability to create documents, spreadsheets, and other types of data and save them for future use. For the small-business user or home-computer enthusiast, this was great. For larger companies, however, it was not enough. Larger companies had greater needs to share information between offices and sometimes over great distances. They needed networks. In this lesson, we will discuss the fundamentals of networking, as well as the specifics of networking media and components.

After completing this lesson, you should be able to:

Describe networking fundamentals and protocols