Communications Devices

A communication device is a hardware device capable of transmitting an analog or digital signal over the telephone, other communication wire, or wirelessly. The best example of a communication device is a computer Modem, which is capable of sending and receiving a signal to allow computers to talk to other computers over the telephone. Other examples of communication devices include a network interface card (NIC), Wi-Fi devices, and an access point. Below is a picture of some of the different types of Wi-Fi devices that are all examples of a communication device.

Communication device errors

Any time a communication device encounters problems communicating with another device you may encounter a communication error. Below are a listing of general steps that can be verified when this error is encountered.

Network Standards

The Importance of Standards

Standards are necessary in almost every business and public service entity. For example, before 1904, fire hose couplings in the United States were not standard, which meant a fire department in one community could not help in another community. The transmission of electric current was not standardized until the end of the nineteenth century, so customers had to choose between Thomas Edison’s direct current (DC) and George Westinghouse’s alternating current (AC).

The primary reason for standards is to ensure that hardware and software produced by different vendors can work together. Without networking standards, it would be difficult—if not impossible—to develop networks that easily share information. Standards also mean that customers are not locked into one vendor. They can buy hardware and software from any vendor whose equipment meets the standard. In this way, standards help to promote more competition and hold down prices.

The use of standards makes it much easier to develop software and hardware that link different networks because software and hardware can be developed one layer at a time.

Network Topology

A network topology is the arrangement of a network, including its nodes and connecting lines. There are two ways of defining network geometry: the physical topology and the logical (or signal) topology.

The physical topology of a network is the actual geometric layout of workstations. There are several common physical topologies, as described below and as shown in the illustration.

In the bus network topology, every workstation is connected to a main cable called the bus. Therefore, in effect, each workstation is directly connected to every other workstation in the network.

In the star network topology, there is a central computer or server to which all the workstations are directly connected. Every workstation is indirectly connected to every other through the central computer.

In the ring network topology, the workstations are connected in a closed loop configuration. Adjacent pairs of workstations are directly connected. Other pairs of workstations are indirectly connected, the data passing through one or more intermediate nodes.

If a Token Ring protocol is used in a star or ring topology, the signal travels in only one direction, carried by a so-called token from node to node.

The mesh network topology employs either of two schemes, called full mesh and partial mesh. In the full mesh topology, each workstation is connected directly to each of the others. In the partial mesh topology, some workstations are connected to all the others, and some are connected only to those other nodes with which they exchange the most data.

The tree network topology uses two or more star networks connected together. The central computers of the star networks are connected to a main bus. Thus, a tree network is a bus network of star networks.

Logical (or signal) topology refers to the nature of the paths the signals follow from node to node. In many instances, the logical topology is the same as the physical topology. But this is not always the case. For example, some networks are physically laid out in a star configuration, but they operate logically as bus or ring networks.

source: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/network-topology

What is economics?

 

• Why are some countries rich and some countries poor? 
• Why have income and wealth become more unequally distributed over the past few decades?
• How will population aging affect life in the coming decades?
• How will the workforce change with advances in robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence? 

Economics is a discipline that can help us answer these questions. Economics can actually be defined a few different ways: it’s the study of scarcity, the study of how people use resources, or the study of decision-making. Economics often involves topics like wealth, finance, recessions, and banking, leading to the misconception that economics is all about money and the stock market. Actually, it’s a much broader discipline that helps us understand historical trends, interpret today’s headlines, and make predictions for coming decades.

Evolution of the Motherboard

While the concept of the motherboard may have its roots in the 1980s, the past ten years have obviously seen its fair share of developments. Most of the changes are inevitable and are determined not by motherboard manufacturers, but by industry giants like Intel that design and build the reference chipsets for its processors. Changes in the processor design, like a new socket with a different number of pins will affect the motherboards too. In that sense, this segment is subject to the changing whims of the PC industry and many of the changes we’ll be seeing are related to it. However, while the core logic used by manufacturers may be the same from one vendor to another, there are still plenty of opportunities for them to innovate and distinguish themselves.

At the start of 1998, the reigning processor then was the Intel Pentium II and one of the best chipsets ever released to complement this processor was the Intel 440BX. With a front-side bus (FSB) ranging from 66 to 100MHz, motherboards built on this chipset supported four memory banks for a toal of 1GB of SDRAM memory. It used the AGP slot (Accelerated Graphics Port) for discrete graphics, supported the PCI 2.1 standard and interfaced with hard drives using ATA/66 in UDMA Mode 2.