Physical Infrastructure: Networking

In this lesson, we’ll cover some important concepts related to networking in cloud. Networking is a vast topic, so we won’t cover everything in this one lesson, but it’ll give us a basic understanding or refresh relevant and essential topics.

Networking is a crucial part of cloud computing since the cloud by itself is a giant network. Even if we use the public cloud, knowing network concepts will help us understand how things communicate.

What is networking?

A network is a set of interconnected devices sharing resources and data using communication protocols over a physical or wireless connection.

Networks are integral to our lives, whether at home, office or in public places. These devices can be computers, switches, routers, printers, servers, etc. Networking enables these devices to communicate. We call these devices nodes, and each node requires an identifier, often represented by an IP address. A link is a transmission media connecting two nodes. It can be physical, such as cable wire, fiber cable, or wireless.

Communication protocols define rules for exchanging information over the network. TCPTransmission Control Protocol/IP Internet Protocolare the most important communication protocols. It is a concise version of the OSI Open System Interconnectionmodel consisting of four layers compared to seven in the OSI model.