
Networks, local and wide, are nothing new. What is new is the idea that the network can be many times greater than the sum of its parts, and that organizations without networked machines are at a severe competitive disadvantage. Networks need administrators, and good administrators need credentials. That’s what the Networking Essentials piece of the MCSE puzzle is for.The authors begin by explaining what computer networks are and why they’re useful–an exercise in the obvious, most likely for most of their readers. They then cover the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) network model and hop into real-work network implementations, including Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface), ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), AppleTalk, and ARCnet. (more…)















