www.tomklein.myrapname.com

Tom Klein is a digital marketing and content consultant in the New York City area with hands-on expertise in the following areas:
  • Application Development
  • Content Architecture
  • Process Optimization
  • Data Integration
  • Web Analytics
  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Customer Management
  • IT Operations
  • Business Intelligence
  • Security
  • Identity Management
  • Workflow Analysis
  • Technical Mentoring
  • Business
    • Collaboration




A network is an interconnected chain of components, people, systems or even other networks.

Image by Tom Klein

Telecommunication Concepts


by Tom Klein

When a stand-alone computer is connected to a network, it becomes part of a greater system where computing and communications converge to provide a higher level of value.


Network

Just as systems don't have to be computer systems, networks too aren't always computer networks. In its simplest terms, a network is an interconnected chain of nodes, where a node can be a person, system, or even another network. Thus we can have a network of people in a personal address book, a network of highways, or the Internet (which is a network of networks).

Metcalfe's Law

Metcalfe's Law was named after 3Com founder Robert Metcalf who observed that the usefulness, or utility, of a network equals the square of the number of users. Unlike Moore's Law which has precise and quantifiable measurement, Metcalfe's Law has a subjective measurement of "usefulness" which makes it more more metaphorical than Moore's Law. Consequently, Metcalfe's Law is generally thought of by the simplified translation that the more people who use the network, the more useful it becomes. Networks such as the telephone system, EBay, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and the Internet itself have achieved a tremendous level of usefulness (and success) because of the large size of their networks. And just as the mass of planets create their gravitational pull, some people-oriented networks can create their own kind of attraction as they increase in size and form a critical mass. At critical mass, the attraction of a network feeds its size, and its size feeds its attraction to a point where the network is considered essential.

Telecommunications

Telecommunications is the exchange of information over networks. The network itself can be connections of wires, radio wave, light beams, physical roads, or even face-to-face socialization. The information can be analog or digital. Analog information has an infinite number of possible values and includes examples such as handwriting in a journal, gestures in a conversation, or a voice carried over a traditional phone system. Digital information in composed solely of ones and zeros which are combined and formatted to represent text, images, audio, and video.