A Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) connects multiple LANs within a city or metropolitan area, offering high-speed communication services. Elaboration: MANs are larger than LANs but smaller than WANs. They are typically maintained by government agencies, ISPs, or large corporations. Example: A city-wide broadband network that provides public Wi-Fi and internet access in urban areas.
A Wide Area Network (WAN) is a network that spans a large geographic area, often using leased telecommunication lines to connect multiple LANs or MANs. Elaboration: Unlike LANs, which are limited to small areas, WANs connect cities, countries, or even continents. They rely on: Example: WANs often face issues like latency, security risks, and high…
A Local Area Network (LAN) is a network that connects computers and devices within a limited geographical area, such as a home, office, or campus, using wired (Ethernet) or wireless (Wi-Fi) communication. Elaboration: LANs allow fast communication and resource sharing (files, printers, internet access) among connected devices. They have: Example: A school’s computer lab, where…
Network topology refers to the physical or logical arrangement of devices (nodes) and connections (links) in a network. Elaboration: Topology determines how data flows between devices, affects performance, fault tolerance, and scalability, and influences network cost and maintenance. Types of Network Topologies: Different topologies are chosen based on factors like cost, data traffic, redundancy, and…
A network is a system of interconnected devices (computers, servers, routers, etc.) that communicate and share resources through wired or wireless connections using standardized communication protocols. Elaboration: A network allows devices to exchange data, share files, printers, and resources, and connect to the internet. Networking enables communication between computers, mobile phones, IoT devices, and servers…
An interrupt is a signal sent to the CPU by hardware or software to indicate that an event needs immediate attention. It temporarily halts the CPU’s current execution and transfers control to a specific interrupt handler. An Interrupt is a mechanism used by hardware or software to interrupt the normal execution of a process in…
I/O management is a critical function of operating systems responsible for controlling input/output devices and ensuring efficient data exchange between the system and peripherals. I/O Management refers to the component of the operating system responsible for managing input/output operations and facilitating communication between processes and peripheral devices. Formally, I/O management is defined as the coordination…
Context switching is the process of saving the state of a currently running process and loading the state of the next process to be executed. This allows multiple processes to share the CPU efficiently. Context Switching is the process of saving and restoring the state (or context) of a process or thread during execution, so…
Paging is a memory management technique in operating systems where memory is divided into fixed-sized blocks called pages. Correspondingly, physical memory is divided into frames of the same size. Paging is a memory management scheme that eliminates the need for contiguous memory allocation, dividing physical memory into fixed-sized blocks called frames and logical memory into…