Data Communication

Data Communication

The 1970s and 1980s saw a merger of the fields of computer science and data communications that profoundly changed the technology, products, and companies of the now combined computer-communications industry. The computercommunications revolution has produced several remarkable facts: 

• There is no fundamental difference between data processing (computers) and data communications (transmission and switching equipment). 

• There are no fundamental differences among data, voice, and video communications. 

• The distinction among single-processor computer,multiprocessor computer, local network, metropolitan network, and long-haul network has blurred. One effect of these trends has been a growing overlap of the computer and communications industries, from component fabrication to system integration. 

Another result is the development of integrated systems that transmit and process all types of data and information.

Both the technology and the technical standards organizations are driving toward integrated public systems that make virtually all data and information sources around the world easily and uniformly accessible. 

This blog aims to provide a unified view of the broad field of data and computer communications.

The organization of the blog reflects an attempt to break this massive subject into comprehensible parts and to build, piece by piece, a survey of the state of the art. 

This introductory post begins with a general model of communications. 

Then a brief discussion introduces each of the Parts  Two through Four of this blog post 2 provides an overview to Parts Five and Six