The profitability of a business directly correlates with its ability to satisfy its customers’ needs. This is as true for you as it is for your customers; your position as a trusted advisor hinges upon your ability to help your customers develop towards their success. Your ability to deliver not only lies in your professional capabilities but also in the speed that you can turn over projects. As trivial as it may seem, computer networking lies at the heart of any business, no matter how large or small. In this article, we will unpack the infrastructure solutions that Dell Technologies offers the local market.
What Is Computer Networking?
What Are The Types Of Networks Available?
Breaking Down Network Architecture For Computer Networking
What Is Computer Networking Used For?
Ensuring Network Safety With Dell For Computer Networking
What Networking Solutions Does Dell Offer?
Computer networking refers to interconnected computing devices that can exchange data and share resources with each other. These networked devices use a system of rules, called communications protocols, to transmit information over physical or wireless technologies. Computer networks were first created in the late 1950s for use in the military and defence. They were initially used to transmit data over telephone lines and had limited commercial and scientific applications. With the advent of internet technologies, a computer network has become indispensable for enterprises.
Just like a hammer and saw have their place in a toolbox, so does the four types of network connections. Each serves its own purpose respectively.
A local area network (LAN) is a collection of devices connected together in one physical location, such as a building, office, or home. A LAN can be small or large, ranging from a home network with one user to an enterprise network with thousands of users and devices in an office or school.
A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a computer network that connects computers within a metropolitan area, which could be a single large city, multiple cities and towns, or any given large area with multiple buildings. A MAN is larger than a local area network (LAN) but smaller than a wide area network (WAN).
A wide area network (also known as WAN), is a large network of information that is not tied to a single location. WANs can facilitate communication, the sharing of information and much more between devices from around the world through a WAN provider.
Personal Area Network (PAN): It is an interconnection of personal technology devices to communicate over a short distance, which is less than 33 feet or 10 meters or within the range of an individual person, typically using some form of wireless technologies
Network architecture refers to the way network devices and services are structured to serve the connectivity needs of client devices.
In this type of computer network, nodes may be servers or clients. Server nodes provide resources like memory, processing power, or data to client nodes. Server nodes may also manage client node behavior. Clients may communicate with each other, but they do not share resources. For example, some computer devices in enterprise networks store data and configuration settings. These devices are the servers in the network. Clients may access this data by making a request to the server machine.
In Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architecture, connected computers have equal powers and privileges. There is no central server for coordination. Each device in the computer network can act as either client or server. Each peer may share some of its resources, like memory and processing power, with the entire computer network. For example, some companies use P2P architecture to host memory-consuming applications, such as 3-D graphic rendering, across multiple digital devices.
Modern computer networks can:
The underlying physical network infrastructure can be logically partitioned to create multiple "overlay" networks. In an overlay computer network, the nodes are virtually linked, and data can be transmitted between them through multiple physical paths. For example, many enterprise networks are overlaid on the internet.
Modern networking services connect physically distributed computer networks. These services can optimize network functions through automation and monitoring to create one large-scale, high-performance network. Network services can be scaled up or down based on demand.
Many computer networks are software-defined. Traffic can be routed and controlled centrally using a digital interface. These computer networks support virtual traffic management.
All networking solutions come with in-built security features like encryption and access control. Third-party solutions like antivirus software, firewalls, and anti-malware can be integrated to make the network more secure.
Network Security is vital in protecting client data and information, keeping shared data secure and ensuring reliable access and network performance as well as protection from cyber threats. A well-designed network security solution reduces overhead expenses and safeguards organizations from costly losses that occur from a data breach or other security incident. Ensuring legitimate access to systems, applications and data enable business operations and delivery of services and products to customers.
Network Security protects your network and data from breaches, intrusions and other threats. This is a vast and overarching term that describes hardware and software solutions as well as processes or rules and configurations relating to network use, accessibility, and overall threat protection.
The Dell Technologies approach to security is intrinsic in nature – it is built-in, not bolted-on after the fact, and it is integrated into every step through Dell’s Secure Development Lifecycle. We strive to continuously evolve our PowerEdge security controls, features and solutions to meet the ever-growing threat landscape, and we continue to anchor security with a Silicon Root of Trust. This paper details the security features built into the PowerEdge Cyber Resilient Platform, many enabled by the Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC9). There are many new features added since the previous PowerEdge security whitepaper, which span from access control to data encryption to supply chain assurance. These include: Live BIOS scanning, UEFI Secure Boot Customization, RSA Secure ID MFA, Secure Enterprise Key Management (SEKM), Secured Component Verification (SCV), enhanced System Erase, Automatic Certificate Enrollment and Renewal, Cipher-Select and CNSA support. All features make extensive use of intelligence and automation to help you stay ahead of the threat curve and to enable the scaling demanded by ever-expanding usage models.
The next higher security option is Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) which offer locking protection that binds the storage drive to the server and RAID card used. This protects against so-called “smash and grab” theft of drives and the subsequent loss of sensitive user data. When a thief tries to use the drive, he or she will not know the required locking key passphrase and therefore be thwarted from accessing the encrypted drive data.
Dell's evolved open networking vision brings massive scalability along with added agility in open, disaggregated solutions. Pick and choose the hardware, software, and network operating systems that best fit your requirements within your data centre and at the edge. At the same time, take advantage of automation and innovative management tools and other key integrations that streamline and simplify your experience with open networking technology.
Dell's networking efforts are split across:
Make the switch anywhere you need it, from the edge to the core to the cloud. Designed for architectural agility and flexibility to help data centres smoothly migrate to a software-designed data centre.
Modernise your wide-area infrastructure with industry-leading hardware platforms and VNFs (virtual networking functions).
Deliver full-featured Software-Defined Networking functionality with Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity that meets your needs with software from Dell EMC, VMware and Open Networking ecosystem partners.
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