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With the proliferation of information technology organizations and businesses have adopted its usage as leverage in boosting its business activities. Networking is inevitable in 21st century business environment. This networking involves businesses, customers, suppliers, regulatory authorities among other key business participants. Each party has its own system which is not compatible with each other. Internetworking technologies comes in handy to solve the problem of interoperability amongst the various business systems (Comer, 2008).
Computer network has been defined as the interconnection or linking of two or more computing components and resources (Akyildiz, et al., 2002). Internetworking emerged as means of connecting dissimilar types of computer networking technologies. To achieve this, the network uses interconnecting networking devices, network software and internetworking protocol suite.
Internetworking device is any hardware device that is used to interconnect two different network resources. These devices comprise routers, bridges, repeaters and gateways.
A router is an internetwork device used to connect two or more networks. They are highly active and intelligent network devices are mostly used in large organization to provide reliable routing paths in the network. A router has memory chips which allow caching of a number of network addresses (Briscoe, 2000).
Routers are network devices that literally route data around the network. By examining data
as it arrives, the router can determine the destination address for the data; then, by using tables
of defined routes, the router determines the best way for the data to continue its journey.
. Figure 1: Router interconnecting four networksBridges internetworking device that connect and manages two large networks by providing different network services. Figure 2: How a bridge works source (Day et al., 2003)
Repeaters are used to boost the data signal. It takes the original signal, regenerate and amplifies before retransmitting. A gateway is a point in the network that functions as an entry to another network (Day et al., 2003). Any networking device or a computer in the organization that control traffic into and outside the organization’s network is referred to as a gateway. The gateway convert incompatible data formats to in one network to compatible data in the other network for example address translation
For proper internetworking the software components are also crucial. The network software components include the Network Operating System, which refers to software bundle that is installed in the server to help manage and provide the network related services. This can be software that runs in a server to enable the management of data, network resource users, ensure data security, management network application and other network related functions.
For smooth data transmission through the various dissimilar networks, the rules on how the data is exchanged must be established. These rules are referred to as protocols. Some of the protocols include the Internet protocols, which is a popular open-system (nonproprietary) protocol suite. The protocol is popular because they can be used to interconnect different networks (Cerf & Icahn, 2005). The Internet protocols comprise of a collection of communication protocols: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP).
The TCP has emerged as a reliable data transmission protocol in an IP environment. Some of the services TCP offers include stream data transfer, reliability, efficient flow control, full-duplex operation, and multiplexing (Goldman & Rawles, 2004). This protocol ensures that the packets are reliably delivered to the destination host in a connection-oriented internetworking. TCP utilizes an acknowledgement signal to assure that the signal arrived at the destination and the destination host has to acknowledge receipt of the packet. The acknowledgement mechanism deal with the problem of packet loss, delay, redundancy and misread packets.
Another protocol in use is the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), which is a network-layer Internet protocol that provides a feedback mechanism to the source address/computer.
In the OSI model the network layer is the one responsible for end to end delivery of packets and for routing the packets over the internetworking devices. To successfully deliver packets the network layer converts the data into packets which will be converted back at the destination node to the original message. The Network layer protocols are main concerned with providing the interface between a host and the network, routing of data packets across the network and ensuring the interoperability between the various dissimilar networks.
References
Akyildiz, I. F., Su, W., Sankarasubramaniam, Y., & Cayirci, E. (2002). Wireless sensor networks: a survey. Computer networks, 38(4), 393-422.
Briscoe, N. (2000). Understanding the OSI 7-layer model. PC Network Advisor, 120(2).
Cerf, V. G., & Icahn, R. E. (2005). A protocol for packet network intercommunication. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 35(2), 71-82.
Comer, D. E. (2008). Computer networks and internets. Prentice Hall Press.
Day, M., Cain, B., Tomlinson, G., & Rzewski, P. (2003). A model for content internetworking (CDI). Work in Progress.
Goldman, J. E., & Rawles, P. T. (2004). Applied data communications: a business-oriented approach. Wiley.
