In businesses, most networks have more than two parties, and as a consequence such networks will often include a number of addressing and path-finding devices. Thus, it becomes possible to send a message to Alice or Paul without having to remember the numbers that make up the exact network addresses of their computers. Path-finding on the huge network of the Internet is mainly taken care of by the aptly named routers , devices that guide data from sender to receiver along the best possible route. Usually, several users are able to draw on the same resource at any time. This provides a high degree of flexibility, as different users can manipulate the same resource in different ways.
Clients are local PCs or workstations on which users run their programs.
When they need a particular resource, they request it from the server holding that resource. One of the big advantages of a network is that several units on the network are able to share resources. There may therefore be several clients to a server just as in the restaurant, where the waiter usually caters for several tables. The following texts will provide an overview of how LANs, WANs and the Internet work. Local area networks come in many different shapes and sizes and can be designed according to the specific communication needs of a company.