Page 188 - CISSO_Prep_ Guide

A full mesh network would require every device on a network to
be connected to every other device. That would ensure that the
loss of any one device would not affect

Network Communications Control
Managing a network that supports many devices requires some
form of communication control so that the devices can
communicate effectively even if every device wants to
communicate at the same time. There are several methods of
controlling network communications in use today.

For most organizations, the network, or carrier, of the traffic
must provide reliable and accurate communications. There must
be a way to ensure that the correct traffic, without alteration, is
sent to the correct party. Also, some networks may require
encryption for the confidentiality of the data being transmitted.
The first step in network communications is to support the type
of network media involved. The communications requirements
are substantially different if the network media is fiber than if
the media is satellite or copper. The size and format of the
packets may be quite different. There is also a wide difference
between communications over a dedicated link such as T1 or
E1, as compared to communications over an on-demand
connection such as a fax machine.

If a dedicated link is to receive many millions of bits of
information per second, the end devices must be able to separate
each individual block of data from the other blocks around it. In
other words, they must be able to separate each byte or character