ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces the applications layer and all of its generic software. Local area networks (LANs) continue to grow in popularity, as evidenced by the many new LAN products and the publicity related to them. Numerous classroom courses on the subject are offered as well as conferences and sessions dedicated to them. The draw is the promise of using LANs to interconnect various computers and resources into a unified system with more power and performance than is available from conventional nondistributed approaches. The transition from the early resource-sharing networks to the local area networks was brought on by conditions such as researcher's vision to provide higher-capability architectures and user's needs for more services. Social considerations deal with customer perception of worth. Data and control flow over the same media conduits and in a single direction only.
