Talk:Computer network

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a better opening line might be

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to better define a computer in a fundamental aspect.. one that seems ommitted from a ton of wiki articles which i intend to hopefully correct.

It often seems to escape people when they are put on the spot especially.. What is a computer? Here's how i might answer that:

A computer network is a series and parallel operations that maintain constant interconnected telecommunication services (called protocols) which operate over radio licensing agreements and contracts.. radio is also known as electromagnetic radiation in the literal and actual root meanings of those words. America-on-mute (talk) 03:21, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The opening sentence is supposed to be simple, see MOS:LEADSENTENCE. It should not get bogged down in details or use excessive technical terms. MrOllie (talk) 03:41, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And, while, in theory, I guess you could call any electromagnetic wave, even beyond gamma rays, "radio", in practice there's a particular frequency range that people think of as "radio", so calling Ethernet over copper or fibre, for example, "radio" is probably going to increase, rather than reduce, confusion. (And what are "radio licensing agreements and contracts"? Various national bodies that regulate the use of electromagnetic frequency ranges don't bother with light, for example, nor do I think they care much about Ethernet-over-copper other than avoidance of interference from radiation from the copper wire.) Guy Harris (talk) 04:46, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with these comments, the opening paragraph needs to be reworked. Having taught computer networks for a number of years, I took the liberty of rewording the introduction, reorganizing it a bit, and adding a couple of references for the definition of computer network. I hope that you find this an improvement. Feedback is more than welcome!! Ngriffeth (talk) 19:01, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

First sentence off the mark

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First line is currently: A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes.

It's not wrong, but I think is misleading. Do they share resources? sort of. They share networking hardware, but that's not what I'd call interesting; it's kinda obvious. They might share peripherals, but not always. They share information and one might say information is a resource, but it's not really IMO.

Also, what's a network node? Too techy for first sentence. So, a network is a set of nodes. Not wrong, but not compelling. Basically a tautology.

I'd say a computer network is a collection/set/bunch of computers that communicate with each other via computer hardware. Stevebroshar (talk) 13:38, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That looks like an improvement. You might consider using network hardware in place of computer hardware. ~Kvng (talk) 14:28, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sincere Apologies by NoBrainFound

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I accidentally made a draft about “Network” and did not realize that there was already a “Network” page on Wikipedia. Sincerely NoBrainFound. NoBrainFound (talk) 21:36, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lead improvements

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Ngriffeth and Zac67 have made some lead improvements but there are no useful edit summaries to explain what problem these changes are intended to address. The new lead is not a significant improvement as far as I can tell. It does have a new citation but the lead is supposed to summarize the body and, in a well developed article, the citations should be in the body and therefore are not necessarily wanted in the lead. ~Kvng (talk) 15:02, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The biggest problem: The article needs considerable reworking. For that reason a summary of what’s here would be extremely difficult and not that helpful to a reader.
The first problem with the lead itself: the lead emphasizes resource sharing, but that’s a high level function that not all networks provide and not all users use. Communication between devices is the basic function of computer networks, so I wanted to emphasize that rather than resource sharing.
Second problem: Communication protocols are mentioned without any preface explaining what they are. It’s simple enough to say they are rules for communicating, so I added that.
Third problem: Telecommunications networks — ie phone networks -- are a special case (albeit perhaps the first network). I don’t know to what extent they even exist any more in developed countries - Verizon, for example, has replaced almost all of its networks in the mid-Atlantic with fiber networks. I’m not sure what the protocol stack is over fiber, but it’s likely not much like the old telecommunications networks. So I think it’s best not to mention them this early.
Speaking of re-working, the history section, while extensive, is confusing because it interleaves multiple tracks on which networks were developed. Until the 1980’s, the ARPANet/internet was almost exclusively American, and Europe was taking a different approach, the ISO OSI 7-layer architecture, which was eventually sort of retrofitted as a 4-layer stack onto the Internet to help explain what was going on. I would suggest separating out developments in the Internet, in the European approach, and the AT&T’s telecommunications network.
Military networks can’t really be separated from the Internet, since it was initially defined for a survivable military network, so that should be made clear.
I hope to clean this up before long. Ngriffeth (talk) 21:20, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I need to take back my comment about telecom networks, this is a more complicated issue of usage. When I worked at Bell Labs, telecommunications networks and the Internet were viewed as altogether different beasts, but that was probably a parochial view. The great thing about editing Wikipedia is that it forces you to back away from your myopic view of the world and try to see it as a whole! Ngriffeth (talk) 21:37, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When I worked at Bell Labs, telecommunications networks and the Internet were viewed as altogether different beasts, but that was probably a parochial view. Yup. Once phone networks went digital, especially with stored-program switching equipment, they were rather similar to computer networks, albeit with many of their own protocol stacks - and various copper and fiber communication networks originated to carry digitized voice calls were also used for digital computer communications. Guy Harris (talk) 00:00, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Remember that we also have Telecommunications network which is arguably a superset of Computer network. Let's try to minimize overlap between these two or at least make clear where the overlap exists. ~Kvng (talk) 14:11, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I am looking at it. And yes, I agree that Telecommunications network includes Computer network. Also the article on Telecommunications is interesting and its style is nice. Ngriffeth (talk) 20:09, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The telephone I mostly use is a 64-bit multiprocessor handheld UNIX box (well, iOS, unlike macOS, hasn't been run through the Single UNIX Specification test suite, so more Unix-like) that probably sends a lot of phone cals over an IP network (VoLTE, which is, as I understand it, is VoIP over LTE for the first hop), so more and more telecommunications networks are also computer networks. Guy Harris (talk) 22:04, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's true if you use the original definition of telecommunications network where it was all about phone calls and the signaling required to support them. The lead of telecommunications network contains a broader definition, exchanging messages. ~Kvng (talk) 15:46, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
By "so more and more telecommunications networks are also computer networks" I mean that more and more of the end nodes of telecommunications networks are devices that could be considered computers in some sense (even IoT devices such as smart meters have microprocessors in them), and more and more of the protocols of telecommunications networks are or are similar to computer network protocols, and more and more of the interior nodes of telecommunications networks are computers doing packet switching.
The example I gave, the voice part of the telephone network, was a telecommunications network but was clearly not a computer network for a long time (for one thing, it predated computing devices that communicated) that has, to a large degree turned into a computer network.
As for the broader sense of telecommunication network:
The introductory paragraph of telecommunications network says

A telecommunications network is a group of nodes interconnected by telecommunications links that are used to exchange messages between the nodes. The links may use a variety of technologies based on the methodologies of circuit switching, message switching, or packet switching, to pass messages and signals.

The introductory paragraph of computer network says

A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or by wireless communication. The devices may be connected in a variety of network topologies. In order to communicate over the network, computers use agreed-on rules, called communication protocols, over whatever medium is used.[1][2]

The differences I see between the two leads are:
  1. the telecommunications network lead speaks of the purpose of the network - "exchanging messages";
  2. the computer network lead speaks of the components of the network - "computers and other devices".
I think the low-level purpose of a computer network could be seen as "exchanging messages"; the higher-level purposes such as "sharing resources" are achieved by exchanging messages.
So are computer networks just telecommunication networks where the nodes are computers - by some definition of "computer" - and computer peripherals? Guy Harris (talk) 20:40, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Peterson, Larry; Davie, Bruce (2000). Computer Networks: A Systems Approach. Singapore: Harcourt Asia. ISBN 9789814066433. Retrieved May 24, 2025.
  2. ^ Anniss, Matthew (2015). Understanding Computer Networks. United States: Capstone. ISBN 9781484609071.

What is the difference between computer networks and telecommunications networks?

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The opening paragraph of the article on telecommunications networks doesn’t distinguish them adequately from computer networks:

A telecommunications network is a group of nodes interconnected by telecommunications links that are used to exchange messages between the nodes. The links may use a variety of technologies based on the methodologies of circuit switching, message switching, or packet switching, to pass messages and signals.

Perhaps telecommunications networks are more general, not requiring computers (up until the 1960’s, the telephone system was controlled by mechanical switches, not computers). Ngriffeth (talk) 21:43, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

the telephone system was controlled by mechanical switches, not computers ...and was mainly carrying analog voice on the data plane. Once the "voice" part went digital, the digital parts got used for digital communication as well (ISDN, T-carrier, E-carrier, SONET/SDH, etc.), and the switches were computerized and communicated with each other over their own digital protocol, the network was definitely similar.
There may be characteristics (circuit-switching vs. packet-switching, local vs. wide-area, etc.) that distinguished telecom network from LANs, at least at one point, but the two types of networking have converged to a large degree. Guy Harris (talk) 00:05, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]