Network Categories

• Peer-to-peer:

Computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application.

Peers make a portion of their resources, such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth, directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination by servers or stable hosts. Peers are both suppliers and consumers of resources, in contrast to the traditional client–server model where only servers supply, and clients consume.

• Served based network:

In a server-based network, the server is the central location where users share and access network resources. This dedicated computer controls the level of access that users have to shared resources. Shared data is in one location, making it easy to back up critical business information. Each computer that connects to the network is called a client computer. In a server-based network, users have one user account and password to log on to the server and to access shared resources. Server operating systems are designed to handle the load when multiple client computers access server-based resources.