The School of Earth Sciences network
Last revision July 28, 2004
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From the user's point of view, the computer network is all about services: browsing web pages; sending and receiving email; exchanging files with a client; storing files on a file server; printing to the department printer; etc. The user learns how to use the applications that provide those services, but also needs to concern him or herself with installing and configuring the proper networking software and hardware on his/her computer so it can participate as part of the appropriate networks.
To understand how best to use the network, it is useful to think of a matrix that includes dimensions of "service type", "computer type", "networking protocol suite (software)" and "networking hardware". Some types of services are implemented on top of different protocol suites depending upon the type of computer. Some computers can use multiple software protocol suites or hardware. Fortunately, we don't have to look at all possible permutations of our four dimensions. Instead, we can look at only the "standard" ways of doing things here in the School. These standards tend to fall into clusters by computer type, so most of this discussion will be organized that way.
In the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford, we support two different types of network hardware: standard 10BaseT ethernet (10 megabits/second speed) and fast 100BaseT ethernet (100 megabits/second speed). Our network supports three different suites of network software protocols: TCP/IP, AppleTalk, and NetBIOS over TCP/IP. We provide some standard services, such as file sharing and printing, that use various combinations of this hardware and software, depending upon computer type.