From the course: Learning the Packet Delivery Process

Distinguish among nodes, switches, and routers

From the course: Learning the Packet Delivery Process

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Distinguish among nodes, switches, and routers

“

- [Instructor] When data needs to be sent, delivered, retrieved, and/or downloaded, the data travels across a network. Although there are many kinds of network, every network has specific hardware to facilitate the transfer. The most common hardware responsible for delivering data are switches and routers. A switch is a device that can be used to connect locally networked devices such as computers, printers, WiFi connected smart devices and so on. A switch can be a standalone device or part of a router. However, the switch can only transfer data to and from nodes on a local network. A switch cannot access the internet. Routers are used to connect local networks to external ones. Routers look at the data packets that they receive and determine where they need to go, even if it's halfway around the world. Routers also use the data they collect to choose the most efficient route for the data to take to its destination. Routers are part of virtually all computer networks because they enable nodes to connect to the internet. Large businesses also use routers to expand their intranets across the globe. If you have a router in your home or small business, you might be able to log into that router from a computer connected to the network. My router's gateway address is 192.168.1.1. Typing that into a web browser brings up my router screen. All I have to do is type my router password and click Sign In. You might see something similar. Once logged in, look over here on the left side and choose Device List or Network Map. This will allow you to see what's connected to your network. The nodes you'll see may include computers, laptops, phones, media devices, or things like what I have here, an internet connected garage door opener, a sprinkler system, televisions and more. Most of these nodes use the router to send and receive data. The garage door is configured to send me a message when someone opens or closes it. The sprinkler system node needs to check the weather forecast so that it knows when to run and when not to. Even the printer is connected to the internet and occasionally downloads updates. To sum up, switches can transfer data to nodes in the local network and can be standalone devices or part of a router. Routers are used to transfer data to nodes that are not on the local network and are smarter than switches. Nodes are the devices on the network. They could be workstations, laptops, and printers, but they can also be smart devices like thermostats. When you're ready to move forward, close the router window if it's open and continue on to learn how local devices on a network are given unique identifiers using DHCP.

Contents