Information means decoded data, in human-readable form. In other words, information is the real-world, useful form of data. For example, the data in an electronic file can be decoded and displayed on a computer screen or printed onto paper as a business letter. Encoding and Decoding Data To store meaningful information as data and to retrieve the information, we use an encoding scheme we agree on a series of electrical patterns that will represent each of the discrete pieces of information we want to store and retrieve. There are many encoding schemes in use.
Signals are simply the electric or electromagnetic encoding of data.
Various components in a computer enable it to generate signals to perform the encoding and decoding task. How Network Data Is Transferred At the most general, conceptual level, to have a computer network we need only three components. First, we need a data code. Next, we need computers and auxiliary devices to encode information into data signals and to decode data signals back into information. Finally, we need the means to transfer the signals between the computer devices.