Computer Network Architecture is defined as the physical and logical design of the software, hardware, protocols, and media of the transmission of data. Simply we can say that how computers are organized and how tasks are allocated to the computer.
The two types of network
architectures are used:
- Peer-To-Peer network
- Client/Server network
Peer-To-Peer network
- Peer-To-Peer network is a network in
which all the computers are linked together with equal privilege and
responsibilities for processing the data.
- Peer-To-Peer network is useful for
small environments, usually up to 10 computers.
- Peer-To-Peer network has no dedicated
server.
- Special permissions are assigned to
each computer for sharing the resources, but this can lead to a problem if
the computer with the resource is down.
Advantages of Peer-To-Peer Network:
- It is less costly as it does not
contain any dedicated server.
- If one computer stops working but,
other computers will not stop working.
- It is easy to set up and maintain as
each computer manages itself.
Disadvantages of Peer-To-Peer
Network:
- In the case of Peer-To-Peer network,
it does not contain the centralized system. Therefore, it cannot back up
the data as the data is different in different locations.
- It has a security issue as the device
is managed itself.
Client/Server Network
- Client/Server network is a network
model designed for the end users called clients, to access the resources
such as songs, video, etc. from a central computer known as Server.
- The central controller is known as
a server while all other computers in the network are
called clients.
- A server performs all the major
operations such as security and network management.
- A server is responsible for managing
all the resources such as files, directories, printer, etc.
- All the clients communicate with each
other through a server. For example, if client1 wants to send some data to
client 2, then it first sends the request to the server for the
permission. The server sends the response to the client 1 to initiate its
communication with the client 2.
Advantages of Client/Server network:
- A Client/Server network contains the
centralized system. Therefore, we can back up the data easily.
- A Client/Server network has a
dedicated server that improves the overall performance of the whole
system.
- Security is better in Client/Server
network as a single server administers the shared resources.
- It also increases the speed of the
sharing resources.
Disadvantages of Client/Server
network:
- Client/Server network is expensive as
it requires the server with large memory.
- A server has a Network Operating
System(NOS) to provide the resources to the clients, but the cost of NOS
is very high.
- It requires a dedicated network
administrator to manage all the resources.
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