Today’s LANs are powerful, flexible and easy to use, but they incorporate many sophisticated technologies that must work together flawlessly. For a LAN to benefit an organization, it must be designed to meet the organization’s changing communications requirements. Building a LAN is a process of choosing different hardware and software components and matching them together so they meet your current needs and are capable of expanding with your growing business.
Fortunately, there’s a growing number of all-inclusive and inexpensive “network-in-a-box” solutions on the market that simplify your decisionmaking process. When you purchase such a package, you receive all the necessary hardware and software you need to connect your company’s computers.
Not everyone will want to purchase a network-in-a-box package; there may be some situations that lend themselves to buying individual network components instead. Even if you do purchase an all-inclusive product, it’s probably a good idea anyway to learn about the individual components of a network and how they function together. The following sections will discuss these items.
Since you plan to use Macintosh computers on your network, you’re in luck—Mac OS computers are already “network-ready” when you purchase them, so you won’t need to install any special hardware in any of them.
It’s possible that you may need to purchase a special adapter to connect each Macintosh to the network. After you’ve determined whether you need an adapter, you connect the computer to the network by plugging one end of a network cable into the port on the Macintosh or adapter. The other end of the cable connects to the rest of the network. We’ll discuss network cables in the next section.
Network hardware and software