Wireless Networking – What Is a Home Wireless Network?

A network is like a spider web, the basic reason that the Internet is often called that. It's a series of lines (called routes) that have intermediate and end points (called nodes) that connect devices together.

Those connections and routes are what allow the devices to share, input or output information across the network.

Along those routes, signals flow that contain information of interest to the network users. Unlike a spider web, though, a computer network sends and receives those disturbances in the form of something called packets.

Software and hardware on the network cooperate to pass those packets. Packets are chunks of information containing your data wrapped in control information. That control data at the front and back of your data allows routers and computers to know where and how to send your data.

In most commercial wireless networking scenarios and home networks, the method uses something called IP, or Internet Protocol. Every device on the network gets assigned an address in the form of what is called a dotted octet, such as 209.131.36.158.

These constitute what are called Private Addresses, since they can't be sent unmodified over the public networks that form the Internet. They're used by routers, computers and peripherals in your home network.

Private commercial networks, such as those inside companies large and small also use these same address ranges. Something called network address translation, NAT, at a device called a boundary router allows many companies and homes to use the same range without accidentally passing information to and from one another over the Internet.

Note that your home computer may have a very different address, such as 70.31.192.243. This is often the case because a single computer connected to the Internet gets an address assigned by the ISP, Internet Service Provider. You then don't really have just a home network, but are a paying customer of a commercial network.

The router software and/or hardware, in cooperation with networking hardware and software in each device, routes the data to and from the proper devices using those addresses.

For more information about wireless networking visit Computer Repair UK.

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