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Author: paul.gray

Office software packages

Not so long ago people used pens and papers to create documents; manually calculated and tallied the expenditure statements; drew meticulously in OHP sheets for presentations? The development and popularity of office productivity programs has completely revolutionized the way offices function and has almost made the methodologies adopted a couple of decades back obsolete. The multi-dimensional functionalities of these application programs have made them a necessity for every kind of industry.
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From the day of there inception as a tool for office administration, these programs have been refined, restructured and written over and over again to meet the growing demands. Probably, Microsoft’s office has been the winner by and large; but it hasn’t stopped its competitors from coming up with programs that are equal and in some cases superior in functionality. Here we will discuss the four main players in the market by mentioning their top features and the ways in which one is more suitable than the others.
Office Suite:

Office suite packages are bundles of applications designed to perform different business tasks. From word processing and spreadsheets to presentations and databases, an office suite will have it all covered. They provide an integrated solution for managing documents, communication, collaboration, data analysis, project management and more. With the right suite of office software tools, businesses can become more efficient in their operations as well as increase productivity by streamlining tedious manual processes. The latest versions offer a wide range of features that make them even more useful for businesses both large and small.

Microsoft Office:

Microsoft Office is the most popular as a complete office suite with over 500 million users worldwide. It is compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems. The Office 365 service is the non-PC, cloud based version of Office and it allows you to operate the application program in phones, tablets and iPads. The most used programs in the Office’s arsenal are Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. The abundant formatting options in Word, alluring designs in PowerPoint and the robust functionalities of Excel has definitely made office operations much easier.

However, this closed-source package has certain limitations like poor support for importing many graphics formats, layout problems in Microsoft Word, lack of support for spreadsheet comparison, no auto-completion in Excel and the absence of work-around for XHTML or HTML conversion in PowerPoint, to name a few. Also, this application program is not free. Although The complete Microsoft Office Package is offered at a discount for student edition the full priced commercial edition is outside many peoples budget. Office 365’s package offers a monthly or yearly subscription. Also, you need a subscription to use Office 365 in Android and iOS devices.

Weighing up the functionality and the shortcomings, Microsoft 365 is clearly best suited for offices, small businesses, commercial enterprises and schools that require high-level functionality and want to seamlessly manage their works across a computer or mobile device.

iWork:

iWork is Apple’s answer to Microsoft’s office. It is an Apple proprietary product that is built to run only in MAC operating system. iWork boasts of providing an intuitive user interface that is as simple as it can get. The easier menu and formatting options are a boon for people who have just started to learn about these programs. Pages is a much cleaner and simpler Word Processor program that has all the layouts and formatting options required to create and maintain documents. The MS Excel equivalent of iWork is Numbers which has similar functionality to Excel put together with complete control over the fonts and design used. Keynote is the presentation program of iWork that possesses rich designs, better animations and audio-video integration. The biggest advantage of them all is it is free for people owning a MAC device.

The main problem while operating in iWork is the lack of compatibility of the file types. It is difficult to open or save an Office document in iWorks without importing or exporting certain functions. Unfortunately, this is as difficult as it sounds. There is this danger of a few components of the original documents disappearing during this transition. Because iWork has a smaller ecosystem as compared to Office, this might be a big problem in the longer run.

pages As mentioned earlier, iWork does everything that Office does with much more clarity and simplicity. If you are a MAC user and your needs are limited to only medium range of functionality then iWork could be the choice for you.

Google Docs:

Google came with an application suite solution known as Google Docs that lets you create and manage your work online. Google Docs is a whole package with individual apps – Docs for word processing, Sheets for spreadsheet functionality and Slides for presentations. These free office software applications run together in the Google Drive ecosystem. The biggest advantage of this package is all that you need is a Google account to access all these applications. It is free, it is online and it can be operated from almost anywhere. The capabilities of Docs, Sheets and slides for various operations are as competent as iWorks or Microsoft Office but with limited sophistication. The sharing option allows you to share your documents or spreadsheets anywhere across the globe almost instantaneously. Google Docs also provides other features like form tool that allows you to build an online survey that stores results in a spreadsheet, create PDFs, fax documents etc.

But one major aspect that we need to worry about working in Google Drive is that you should be online, at least for creating a new document. While there are options available to edit your works offline, you would still need an internet connection for synchronization. So this would be a disadvantage when all you have is a stand-alone PC. So Google Docs is best suited when you want the information to be processed immediately and to be shared on the fly.

LibreOffice:

Libre Office is a free office suite. It is the forked version of apache OpenOffice with programs to cover all the functionality of Microsoft Office. Libre Office is available in over 110 languages and is slowly gaining popularity. Being an open-source suite, this is considered as one of most sophisticated office suites available. It is available across Windows, Mac and Linux platforms and it has the capability to run on USB flash disks without any installation. The word processor in Libre is known as Writer; spreadsheet tool is known as Calc and the presentation tool is Impress. The functionality of these tools are akin to that of its Microsoft or Apple equivalents and in some cases, even better.
Being built in an open source environment has its short-comings. The presentation app has only a few themes and the customizable tool bars doesn’t adjust to your most-frequented options like it does in MS office. Libre office is suitable for tech-savvy people who strongly believe in the open source system.
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Office Apps

Nowadays, with the ever-increasing trend of people owning a mobile phones, office apps are becoming more and more popular. App stores are filled with various office suites which come with different price tags and feature sets. With these mobile apps, users can perform various tasks like creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations right from their device. The intuitive user interface ensures that users can easily create, edit and save their documents without any hassle. Office apps on mobile phones also provide a host of features like document sharing and cloud storage. This makes it easy for users to access the same document from multiple locations which is extremely useful in today’s busy world. All in all, office software apps are a great way to stay productive and organized on the go.

What is the best office package?
The best office package depends on the needs of the user. If your main requirement is to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations, then a suite like Microsoft Office or Google Docs will be ideal. Both these suites provide powerful tools and are great for collaborating with colleagues. For users who need basic functions such as word processing, LibreOffice is a great open source alternative. Mobile office apps are also great for users who need to stay productive on the go and have basic needs such as viewing and editing documents. Ultimately, it depends on your specific requirements and budget.
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May 22, 2015
Office Productivity Software

Computers could be considered as the biggest invention of the 20th century. This Technology Era has removed so many obstacles and pushed boundaries much farther. You can love it or hate it, but they have invaded our present and would continue to expand in the future. From simple computing operations to robotic science, much of mankind’s progress till date could be attributed to computers and its related technologies. The functionalities of the computers have grown leaps and bounds and we are discovering new necessities every passing day. This machine has a great impact in advancements of every field that we cared to venture upon. Several tasks that were considered as uphill and mundane before are reduced to a matter of just-a-few-clicks now. One such development that made this dream possible for human beings is the productivity software.
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The Productivity software, often called Office Suite, is an application program that is programmed to make operations related to creating and processing of information much easier. We can now manage huge amount of data and perform a variety of operations in just a few seconds. With many million downloads a day and so many office programs in the market, there is no dearth in the availability of options. Let us dive deeper and know more about office software’s functions and how it has managed to make our lives easier.

The multi-faceted program

Office Suites can perform an array of operations, each with many dimensions, thus providing you all the solutions for your office needs. A few programs such as Word Processors, Spreadsheets and Presentation creators are used widely than other programs like mailer, database software, note-takers, project management software etc. These programs have cross-linking and sharing capabilities which make them so powerful and efficient.

The Word Processor is a program such as Microsoft Word, iWork Pages, Google Docs etc. that lets you create a document with pictures, hyperlinks and graphics. It offers you full freedom to customize the layout, fonts, size etc.; helps you to correct the grammar and spelling mistakes in the documents; provides you with suggestions from dictionary and thesaurus and allows you to save in many formats to run across many platforms. Advanced word processors help multiple users to edit a single document at the same time, help to create table of contents, provide version control for a document and so on. The Word Processors are widely used by authors, editors, copy writers, and students for their everyday works.

The Spreadsheet is intelligent software that typically has many sheets with thousands of rows and columns. The main purpose of a spreadsheet is to allow a user to record and analyze data in a tabular format. These spreadsheets have made accounting and other calculations easier with their built-in formulae. All you have to do is enter data, choose a row for your answer and select the formula that you want to apply. Advanced spreadsheets allow users to enter their own formulae to scale its functions. We can also compare the data entered and produce an analysis report with a variety of graphs and charts. A spreadsheet is capable of much more functionalities that make it one of the best tools for an organization. This software is especially useful for data analysts and accountants. Examples of spreadsheets are Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and iWork Numbers etc.

Presentation programs are designed to project your thoughts in a more intuitive and elegant way. This program has built-in layouts for slides that you can fill with the information you intend to present with pictures, graphs and animations. This software is very useful to create an effective visual aid for the students to learn. For businesses, this tool has become a necessity during meetings and brain-storming sessions. The presentations can be also be loaded with audio clippings and flash animations. When your presentation is equipped with interactive integrated hardware elements, you can project your information across many geographic locations.

The other products of productivity suites like email clients, desktop publishing software and personal information managers etc. are used by specific set of people for their business or academic requirements. The mailer software is used for sending and receiving of emails – from small groups to big enterprises. Note-taking programs are used to create and maintain notes from various sources. It also allows editing, analyzing and sharing of the notes. There are so much more programs that are tailored for personal use, thanks to the open source network.

The Audience

These office programs are particularly beneficial for the so-called “Knowledge Workers”. The knowledge workers can be students, doctors, engineers, data analysts, inventors or coders. This group consists of people from many streams of life whose day-to-day work involves processing of information. These programs evolve in order to meet the new challenges that they are exposed to everyday, thereby reducing time and increasing the efficiency. They need data and they need it in the way they can easily understand and process. These office suites are designed with them as the target beneficiaries.

Another group of users are the businessmen. They need information everyday to introspect and grow. In the age where information is considered to be the wealth, no wonder they consider these programs as God-sent. They use many office programs such as spreadsheets, presentation, note-taker etc. The dynamic nature of their industries goes well with the dynamic capabilities of these applications.

The Future

With the technology moving towards smaller and more compact models, smart phones and tablets have almost replaced the computers. Subsequently, these application programs are designed to work effortlessly in all these platforms. With many new service providers entering the market every day, the necessity to scale and fit has become inevitable for every technology. Another major enhancement that has been recently added to all these programs is the cloud-share capability for storing and sharing of information on the go. While we cannot accurately predict the next big thing in this industry, we can still say that we are equipped with technologies that can evolve, fit and work efficiently in any given scenario.

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May 21, 2015
DNS and Domain Names

In this lesson we will look at understanding the DNS “Domain Name System” and how web addresses work on the internet.

Have you ever wondered how your computer knows how to find the correct web server when you type in a web address?
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Use the buttons below to navigate through the lesson

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When you type in a website, e.g. www.example.org your computer has to perform a lookup to translate that address into something it understands.

The computer looks up “www.example.org” in a big list, and translates the address into an IP Address.

An IP Address is a list of numbers which tells the computer how to find the correct web server for the web site you asked for. An IP address is usually in the form of four numbers separated by dots, for example 127.0.0.1. The maximum for each number is 255, so IP address range from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255.

(Note: There is a new form of IP addresses known as IPv6 which is six numbers separated by “:” characters. You can think of them as being basically the same idea but longer numbers! So don’t be confused if you see an IP address that doesn’t look like 0.0.0.0 – it’s just an IPv6 address.)

This ‘big list’ where the computer looks up the IP address is called the Domain Name System, which is often shortened to DNS.

When you register a domain name, for example, free-online-training-courses.com/ you have ownership of that address. You can point it at any IP address you like.

The domain name is just a name – it doesn't come with a web host… for that you have to get a web host! See our earlier lessons on web hosting to understand how to do this.

There are a number of companies which provide access to registering new domain names. When you buy a domain name you can log into the portal the company provides and edit the DNS records for your domain name.

So, perhaps when you register the domain name you have already purchased a web host. And you know that your web host has assigned you the IP address 127.0.0.1.
So you can log into your DNS service and change the IP address associated with your domain name to 127.0.0.1.

This causes the DNS changes to 'propagate'. This means that the big list of DNS addresses is updated all around the world. Sometimes this takes a few hours.

Then, whenever you type into a browser your domain name, e.g. www.example.org the computer will look up your domain name, find the IP address (127.0.0.1) and then it will ask your web host for your website.

At this point the web server software on your host will respond. And you already understand something about how this works from our earlier lessons!

Now you are beginning to get an idea of the entire workings of the internet and web browsers in more detail. This knowledge will help you greatly as you learn to create websites.

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November 15, 2014
How to Choose a Web Host

In this lesson we will look at the considerations that go into choosing the correct web host for our needs.

Now you understand what web hosting is, you may be wondering how to choose a web host.
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Use the buttons below to navigate through the lesson

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If you search for web hosting you will see there are hundreds or thousands of companies who are offering web hosting services. How do we decide which is best?

There are a number of important considerations.

Do we want their specific platform, or do we want a generic web host?

What technology do we require from our web host?

Some web hosts offer a complete package including specialised software to create websites using their platform. For example they might have created a particular blogging engine, and if we get hosting from them it must use their blogging engine. This can be very useful as it saves us the effort of creating our own blog!

However, these platforms may not be very flexible. Perhaps they can only be used in a certain way, or for a certain kind of website. Later we may be frustrated that we cannot do exactly what we want using this platform.

The alternative approach to this is a more generic web host. For example, a web host that offers simply basic Windows machines running IIS (or Apache on Linux) gives us the complete technical freedom to do whatever we want. We can put up our own HTML files for simple websites, or we can write complex websites in a server-side language such as ASP.NET or PHP or Ruby.

The downside of this generic approach is that we have to write our own software, which is difficult and time-consuming.

Of course if you want to write a website in ASP.NET then you must choose a host which provides a web server that runs ASP.NET. And the same goes for PHP or Ruby or other server-side languages.

Sometimes there is a tradeoff – perhaps we can use a web host which provides their platform, but they allow us to customise the code for our own needs, or to run other sites alongside it for additional functionality.

Technology is the most important initial consideration, as you need to ensure your web host is capable of doing everything your website requires.

Support & Reputation

Does the hosting company you are looking at have strong support systems? Do they respond to support tickets rapidly? Hopefully you will not need much support, but it is inevitable that you will encounter problems and it is useful to have support.

It is worth noting that the hosting company is not responsible for everything to do with your site. They are responsible for ensuring the physical machine your site runs on is available and accessible, and for any software on it that they agree to install (for example the web server software). However if your site has bugs or problems they are usually not your line of support!

Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether a problem is to do with your site or to do with the web host not working correctly – in this instance you want to know that your web host is responsive to support requests so you can find out and get to fixing it!

Also always check the reputation of a company you are getting your hosting from. Hosting contracts can be cancelled at any time, but you should still ensure the business you are dealing with has a good reputation amongst its customers.

Space and Bandwidth

How much storage space and bandwidth do you get with your web host?

If you are making a small site that you will access only every now and then (for example, creating a family album just for yourself… and you don’t want to use a large photo-sharing service because you like the challenge of making your own website!) then you do not need a lot of bandwidth.

However if you intend to create a website to rival Facebook then you will need thousands of web servers and a lot of bandwidth. Of course you wouldn’t begin by getting all that bandwidth in advance! And if you are getting millions of hits per day then you should probably start developing your own computing infrastructure..!

It is important to be realistic and realise you will not have massive bandwidth needs immediately.

But it is important to estimate your traffic accurately. Will you get 1 hit per day? Or 1000? Or 100,000? In each case you need to choose the right amount of bandwidth.

Which brings us to…

Price

The more computing power and bandwidth we want the more our hosting will cost. For most sites we don’t expect a lot of traffic so we can afford to choose a lower amount of bandwidth or computing power. These days it is easy to scale up the power of a server if it starts getting more traffic than expected, so it is wise to begin with the minimum amount of power you think you will need.

You must budget wisely – can you afford the monthly cost of this host? Paying more than you need for hosting is not a good use of the money for your business or family – look carefully at the costs, compare to other hosting companies that have the same technology and choose one that appears reputable (check the reviews!), and affordable for you.

Conclusion

There are a number of important considerations when choosing a web hosting company. On the technical side you must consider the platform and software they offer, and how customisable it is. It is important to estimate your bandwidth requirements realistically. And choose a package you can afford from a reputable company.

Good luck with your hosting!

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November 14, 2014
What is Web Hosting
In this lesson we will learn what is meant by the term ‘web hosting’, and we will understand more deeply how web servers create the responses to the requests from our browser.

Web Hosting is the name commonly given to the service which makes our websites available over the internet.

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Websites are uploaded to a computer known as a ‘web host’ and from there the web site is accessed. If you recall our lesson on What Is The Internet you will realise that a web host is just another name for a server.

There is nothing particularly special about ‘web hosting’ computers – they are just computers like any other! They usually have more specialised hardware than home computers (for example more memory, or a faster harddisk) but they are essentially “just computers”.

Unlike our home computers web hosts are connected to the internet all the time. Of course this is because the website must be accessible at all times so people from all over the world can access it.

Web Host Software

Servers used as a web host are commonly configured with different software to the home computers we are used to.

There are two main ‘flavours’ of web host software: Windows and Linux.

Web hosts running Windows usually use a business/server version of Windows. This is similar to the home versions of Windows we are used to, but has some extra features for server administrators to use.

Linux is a very popular free operating system which is very common in the world of servers and web hosting.

However, the operating system is not sufficient software to run a modern website. On top of the operating system the web hosting machine also has a ‘web server’ installed.

This is confusing terminology, as the term “web server” is used to refer to the physical machine, and also this particular bit of software that runs on the machine! However, it is usually obvious from context when we are referring to a physical machine and when we are referring to the web server software.

On Windows the most common web server software is known as IIS. This is the web server provided by Microsoft.

On Linux the most common web server is known as Apache.

Both Apache and IIS are capable of more or less the same tasks, though the way in which we administer each is different. Naturally there are multiple different versions of both Apache and IIS so there is a lot of detail to be learned when mastering either of these pieces of software.

Do you remember what a web request is? If not you should review our lesson on How Web Browsers Work.

When a web request arrives at the web host the web server software intercepts it. At this point IIS or Apache (or some other web server software) decides how to respond to the request and creates the response.

Depending on the nature of the web site the way in which this response is created can be very different.

For example, if a request comes in:
1. Asking for an image. The web server simply responds with the image file.
2. Asking for an HTML page. The web server simply responds with the contents of the HTML file.
3. Asking for a page written in ASP.NET or PHP or some other server-side language. The web server calls yet another program (ASP.NET or PHP etc) and that program creates the response. This response is then returned by the web server.
There are many possible ways the web server may create a response, but these few examples hopefully give you the idea. Sometimes it is as clear as sending back an individual file. Sometimes the web server asks another program for what to send back.

This is known as a pipeline. More and more programs can be connected together in this pipeline to allow very complex responses to be created.

Now you understand in a little more detail how responses are created by web servers. If you have been following our course then you can imagine how you might put your HTML files on a web server and access them. Or maybe you can begin learning more complex languages such as PHP or ASP.NET and start generating HTML files dynamically on the server! We will work towards more understanding in future lessons.

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November 13, 2014
Introduction to Multiple Hard Drives

In this lesson we will look at the principle of using multiple hard drives for backup or redundancy purposes. In later lessons we look at specific ways of achieving this.

As we know, the hard drive is where permanent information and data is stored in our computer.

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Sometimes hard drives can have mechanical failures. In this case we might lose all our data. This is why it is important to regularly backup our data.

Another means of making sure our data is safe is known as redundancy. Redundancy is where we have multiple copies of the data so if any one copy fails there is always another copy.

There are many ways of achieving this. One way is to have multiple physical drives in the machine. Then we can configure the computer to use the multiple drives simultaneously.

This is known as RAID, which stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks.

One obvious way of using a RAID configuration is to have several hard drives that all contain the same data.

So we might have Drive 1, Drive 2 and Drive 3. But our computer considers them all to be the same drive, “Drive C”. Every time we write to “Drive C” we actually write physically onto all three drives. This means that writing to a RAID in this way is slower, as we write everything three times. But if one of the drives fails we always have the other two drives as automatic backups so our data is safe!

There are other ways of configuring RAID. Each one has tradeoffs, as sometimes we will be increasing the time required to write data, or speeding up reading data, or having more redundancy or less redundancy.

For example, if we wanted to have very quick time to read data we might ‘stripe’ it across two drives. This means that when we go to read a large file we are reading part of it from one drive, and part from another drive, so we can read both at once. This makes it very quick to read data. However, this is more dangerous for our data as now we have two points of failure: either drive could fail and we would lose ALL the data.

Now you have seen the principle of using multiple hard drives simultaneously we will look at practical examples in the next lessons.

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September 25, 2014
Using Remote Desktop in Windows

In this lesson we will have a brief introduction to using Remote Desktop – a component of Windows that allows us to control another computer remotely.

Sometimes we need to operate a computer remotely. For example perhaps we are maintaining a website, and the data for that website is stored on a remote computer in a data centre elsewhere in the world.

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In this instance we use Remote Desktop to control the remote computer.

First we find Remote Desktop in the Start Menu:

When we open the program we are prompted for the Computer to connect to.

This can be specified by an IP address, or by a computer name, or a URL. If we use a name or URL then the DNS server specified for our connection must be able to translate that name to an address. For example, when connecting to a computer on the local network our router will know what address the computer name translates to.

On clicking connect we are prompted for a username and password. We must have the correct credentials – otherwise anybody could be controlling our computer! These credentials can be local user accounts for the remote computer, or a network account that has access to the remote computer.

After entering the username and password we are shown the desktop of the remote computer. We can now control it as usual – anything we do on this desktop is happening on the remote machine and not on ours.

Finally when we are finished with our tasks on the remote computer we log off.

WARNING: If you select ‘Shut Down’ then you will turn off the remote computer. If you don’t have physical access to the machine it may be difficult to turn it back on – so be careful and consider whether you really want to shut it down, or just to log off!

Now you know the basics of how to use Remote Desktop.

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September 25, 2014
Cleaning Temporary Files and History with Free Software for Windows
In this lesson we will look at another common computer maintenance task – removing temporary files using some free software.

When we use our computers often old temporary files are left lying around by programs. Over time they can accumulate and cause slowdown or low memory space. It is good to clean them up every few months.

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Luckily we don’t have to do this manually. Free software exists that will clean up these old files for us.

There are many alternatives you can use to perform this task but one of the most popular is called CCleaner.

CCleaner comes with professional versions that cost money but for the average home user the free version is sufficient for our needs.

Here are the steps to follow:
1. There are two tabs at the top of this list:
2. First, the Windows tab. You can choose which bits of data you wish to keep and which you wish you delete. For example you may wish to keep your Internet History or Cookies or Autocomplete history for convenience. Alternatively you may wish to delete it to save space.
3. Open the Applications tab. Here you can choose any application data you wish to remove. For example if you use browsers other than Internet Explorer there may be options here to remove the temporary internet files for those browsers.
4. When you have selected the data click ‘Analyze’
5. Now you are presented with details of the data that will be removed.
6. If you are happy to remove all these files then click ‘Run Cleaner’. WARNING: this will – of course – delete all the data you have selected. If you are unsure then untick the box for the data you want to keep and press ‘Analyze’ again.
7. Now you have saved the harddrive space and removed the temporary files.
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September 25, 2014
How to Create an E-mail account online

In this lesson we will see how to create an email account using an online service.

E-mail is a standard way of sending messages to a person or business over the internet. In order to send and receive email we need an email account.

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Many online services exist that provide free email. Some of the most popular include Gmail from Google, Hotmail from Microsoft and Yahoo mail from Yahoo.

In this lesson we will create a Gmail account, but you can choose any online service you like: they all have a similar process.

Navigate to www.gmail.com (or the webpage for the service you choose).

Find the ‘create account’ link and click upon it:

Now we need to fill in our details:

Enter your name and other details.

When you choose a username this will be your email address, so you must pick a name that nobody else has used before. Sometimes this means you have to add numbers at the end of your name to make sure you have a unique name! The email service will usually suggest alternatives if the name you would like has been taken.

When choosing a password be sure to make it secure: include capital letters, numbers and symbols, and make sure it is as long as possible. And – of course – make sure you can remember it, as you will need this password to use your email!

Sometimes you need to solve a little puzzle to prove that you are human. This is to prevent malicious people from creating too many email accounts using automated systems. For example in this case I have to read a number and type it in – a task that is simple for a human but complicated for a computer.

After you click Next the email service will usually confirm your details.

Then you will be logged into your new email account, and it is ready to use.

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September 25, 2014
What is a Network?

In this lesson we will learn the basics of what is a computer network.

In the early days of personal computing computers were usually disconnected from one another. They would be used for document writing and calculations, and special equipment was required to connect them together.

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Nowadays nearly all computers come with network equipment included so it is easy to join them in a network.

How are networks formed?

Normally a network is controlled by a central link. Sometimes this central link is another computer. Usually in a home it is a small box called a router. This router is a specialised computer.

The computers can be connected to the router through physical cables or through wireless signals.

Normally the router requires a password from each computer. This is for security so only trusted computers can access the network.

Once computers are on the same network they can share information with one another.

For example, you can copy documents and pictures from one computer to another. When this happens the documents are sent over the network connection to the router, which then sends the data to the destination computer.

All data passed over the network is known as network traffic. The router is like a traffic policeman that directs this traffic down the correct paths.

Another benefit to connecting computers together on a network is that they can share their connection to the internet.

The internet is a ‘network of networks’ – it is the network that connects computers from all over the world.

There is no one central router for the internet: there is far too much traffic for just one router to cope with! So the internet is a decentralised network: because there is no centre.

If a router on a home network is connected to the internet then all of the computers on that network can connect to the internet through the router. This is how most homes have their internet connection nowadays.

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September 25, 2014