Computer Networking Solution: What hardware you need?

What hardware or equipment that we need to create or built network? Basically we need three equipments:

1. Network Interface Card
2. Network Cable
3. Network Hub/Switch

1. Network Interface Card.
It is a electronic circuit card inside any network computer. It is also called NIC in short. Most of motherboard nowadays has Network Interface Card built in with motherboard. This will make easy for us since we don't have to purchase additional NIC. But if your motherboard don't have it, don't worry because the price for NIC nowadays is cheap...trust me its cheap. The NIC has a slot that we can insert connector called RJ45. This is for wired situation. For wireless environment, the NIC has a small antenna that capture the signal send by access point. I will discuss about wireless in future. The most common NIC that I use is from 3-Com and D-Link. The are many brand in the market, just ask your computer shop.

2. Network Cable.
The network cable is what actually connects the computers together. It plugs into the network interface card at the back of our computer. The cable is called UTP cable. UTP is stand for 'unshielded twisted pair'. If you cut the cable, we can see 8 cable with different colour. Every two cable is twisted together and the cable is not shielded. There is a cable that shielded to be use in certain condition. At this moment, don't worry about it. The UTP cable also has category, normally we use CAT5 or CAT5e or CAT6. The different is speed.

3. Network Hub/Switch.
If your network is set up using twisted pair cable, the network probably also has a network hub/switch. The hub/switch is a small box with a bunch of cable connector. Each computer on the network is connected by cable to the hub. The hub function is to connect all computer to each other.