Specific Instructional Objective

On Completion of this lesson, the students will be able to: 
• Define Computer Networks
 • State the evolution of Computer Networks
 • Categorize different types of Computer Networks 
• Specify some of the application of Computer Networks Introduction The concept of Network is not new
. In simple terms it means an interconnected set of some objects
. For decades we are familiar with the Radio, Television, railway, Highway, Bank and other types of networks
. In recent years, the network that is making significant impact in our day-to-day life is the Computer network
. By computer network we mean an interconnected set of autonomous computers
. The term autonomous implies that the computers can function independent of others
. However, these computers can exchange information with each other through the communication network system
. Computer networks have emerged as a result of the convergence of two technologies of this century- Computer and Communication as shown in Fig
. The consequence of this revolutionary merger is the emergence of a integrated system that transmit all types of data and information
. There is no fundamental difference between data communications and data processing and there are no fundamental differences among data, voice and video communications
. After a brief historical background in Section , Section 
introduces different network categories
. A brief overview of the applications of computer networks is presented in Section 
. Finally an outline of the entire course is given in