Lesson video

Hi, I'm Allen Heard, and welcome to lesson two of six.

This one is all about networking hardware.

Today, you will need a pen and paper, or something to write with and write on.

Remove all distractions, if you can.

Turn notifications off mobile devices, if you've got any nearby.

You can pause the video, and when you're settled, we'll get started.

So, in this lesson, we'll list examples of network hardware, and you'll complete a network diagram.

So, networking hardware, well, what's hardware, to start with? Well, hardware are the physical devices that you can see and touch.

For instance, the monitor you're watching this video on is a piece of hardware.

So, as far as networking hardware is concerned, they are the physical devices that you can see and touch that are required in order to create a network.

So, I want to show you some images of networking hardware in a second, and you've got about three seconds for each one to decide whether you think they are a network cable, a hub, a router, or a server.

You ready? Okay, here we go.

So, what am I? Three, two, one.

That one is a hub.

That's used for connecting computer together, and we'll see a bit more, a bit of detail about one of those in a second.

What is this one? Three, two, one.

That one is a network cable, and that's used to connect the machines together to either a hub or to each other.

Three, two, one.

What is that one? That is a server.

There are different types of server, and we'll find all about those in a second, and lastly, three, two, one.

That one is a router, and that one should be the most familiar if you've got a router at home for your internet connection.

If not, they're a small box, sometimes with antenna on them, as you can see there, and that connects you to the internet.

Okay, one of the images you saw was of network cables.

They're used to connect devices to each other or to a hub, and they've got little plastic plugs on the end that you connect into sockets.

Generally made up of copper wires throughout the core of the cable, and data can be sent in both directions on those cables.

So, in this task, this first task that you're going to do, you're going to build a network.

There's a little scenario.

A small company has four people working for it, and each one of them has got computer, and all of the computers need to be connected to each other so that they can all share information between them.

You have got a worksheet for this, and in a second, you'll pause the video.

You'll connect each computer together by drawing lines between them.

You'll have to draw out a little icon for a computer, as you can see there, and importantly, each computer needs to be connected to each other computer.

So, you can pause the video and complete the task.

Okay, welcome back.

How did you get along? This shows how you should have set your network up, with each computer connected to each other computer so that they can all stay connected and share information.

Can you see a disadvantage with this setup? Well, this setup requires a lot of cabling, and obviously the more computers you connect together, the more cables you need.

This can be quite complex, and become quite expensive too.

I'm going to pause the video in a second.

You can have a little experiment, and see how many cables would be required to connect six computers together.

So, here we show four, and we already need one, two, three, four, five, six cables just to connect four machines together.

How many will we need to connect six machines to each other? So, how many cables would be needed for a room with six computers? You can find this on the worksheet, Task 1, part 2, and come back when you're finished.

Okay, so 15 separate cables would be required to connect six computers, so hopefully your diagram looks like the one I've got there for you.

Hopefully you've got every cable in there.

You may have forgotten the one to connect the top-left machine to the top-right, or you may have forgotten the one to connect the bottom-left to the bottom-right, but if you got all those cables, then massive well done, good job, 'cause it's quite tricky to figure out those final two.

So, look at all those cables.

Imagine how many we would need to connect 20 computers, then you can start to realise that it becomes really, really unmanageable, and it's really not that intuitive, I suppose, to connect every device to every single other device.

Thankfully, that's where we can utilise a hub.

So, a hub has a number of ports on the front.

You can see those little black marks on the front of the hub.

Each one of those is a slot for a network cable, so lots and lots of individual computers can connect to that hub.

So, for instance, a message sent from computer A to computer B would travel via the hub.

A computer wishes to instal a hub, instead of having everyone connected to every other machine, using the four computers we can see here.

So, Task 2 in your worksheet, can you now introduce a hub into your diagram, and modify it so that each device is only connected to the hub instead of each other? You can pause the video and complete the task.

Welcome back, the hub here we can see becomes the central device in the network, and all messages that pass between the computers pass through that hub.

Already, you can see that this requires much less cabling.

Yes, there's an added cost for the hub, but it becomes a lot less of a tricky situation to manage, if we know that all devices are connected to this hub centrally.

So, let's introduce a server into the mix.

So, in some networks we'll have a server.

These are generally a powerful computer that could provide some services.

There are different types of server.

You can have a file server, for instance, that stores all the documents, be that videos, or text documents, sound files, or movies, and you could also have servers for different things, such as mail and applications.

So, at school you've probably got a file server where all your files are stored, and then your files are stored in an individual location on there, as are all your friends and your teachers.

They're all stored on that file server as well.

Okay, so now this is going to be Task 3.

The company network diagram currently looks like this, so you should have your four computers, which I've labelled A, B, C, and D.

For a second, imagine that computer A's turned off.

Could computer C access the files that are stored on computer A? Well, no, because it's switched off, so what the company wishes to do is instal a file server, so that all four computers can store their files in one central location, and then it doesn't matter if one or two of the machines are turned off.

If a computer wishes to access files, they're all stored centrally on that file server that wouldn't be switched off.

So, using the worksheet for Task 3, can you add a file server to your network diagram? You can pause the video and complete the task.

Welcome back, hopefully your network diagram looks like this now, with a file server also attached to the hub, and this means that any computers, if they're turned off, they can all still access the files through the central file server.

Okay, so now I've got a different task for you.

There is a worksheet for Task 4.

Using the information you've learnt so far during this lesson, there is a fill-in-the-gaps activity for you to complete.

You can copy the text down in your notepad, or on the worksheet, if you've printed it off, and fill in the gaps with the words provided.

Hi, welcome back, so here's the first paragraph.

As far as your filling-in-the-gaps exercise is concerned, to connect together different devices, you need cables.

The cables carry the messages sent between machines, communicating with one another.

The most common type are called Ethernet cables.

The cable is made up of a number of copper wires, and has the ability to send data in both directions.

Both was the word you were looking for, what you should have filled in on that first paragraph.

Second paragraph, the first word you required was hub.

A hub connects a number of computers together within the same room or building.

This means that each computer does not need to have its own dedicated connection to every other computer in a network, which reduces the number of cables needed, so cables was the second word that was required there.

And finally, the last paragraph, a server is often described as a powerful computer that provides services.

One example of a service that it can provide is shared files, such as text, images, sound, or video, so server and video were the two words missing there.

Hopefully you got all those right.

If you did, big well done.

So, let's look at a router.

So when a network needs to be connected to another network over a large area, then we use a router, and this forwards messages from one network to another, so it acts kind of as a gateway between the two.

A common job of a router is to join a home network to the internet via an ISP, or internet service provider, so whether you're watching this video through a network at home, through a router, or through a mobile device, for instance, whoever is providing the connection to the internet through that device, or to the internet, is your ISP.

Okay, we're going to add to our network diagram now.

So, the company wants to connect its network to the internet so that the four users are not only sharing files, but they can carry out internet research on the computers via the web.

So, here we can see two question marks where we need to add some more icons to our diagram.

So, using the worksheet for Task 4, you're going to add a router and an ISP to get to the internet for your users.

An ISP is generally denoted with a cloud icon, as you can see there.

So, you can pause the video and complete Task 4.

Welcome back, this is your finished network diagram.

So, the router is connected to the hub, just as the file server was in the previous scenario, and is on here too.

All of the computers now have access to the router, and all computers can now carry out research on the web via the internet, because it obviously goes through the ISP as well.

So, well done on creating your network diagram using cables, a hub, and a server, and the router too, with all the personal computers.

Don't forget there is a quiz to complete at the end of this, and if you would like to share your work with Oak National, you can ask your parent or carer to share it on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational, and #LearnwithOak.

Love to see what kind of network diagrams you've come up with.

Hope you've enjoyed that lesson, see you next time.