C o m p u t e r N e t w o r k s

Introduction

Describes purpose and usage of title

Welcome to my educational multimedia title about computer networks. The aim of this title is to provide basic information about computer networks for decision makers in organizations. At the same time it should be a prototype for developing such titles in HTML (if you don't know what this is, don't worry about it). These imply the following points:

The usage of the title should be very easy, in particular if you are already familiar with WWW browsers
The information content is at this moment very basic, i. e. there is a need for more depth in data
Multimedia is widely used. This causes speed problems when used over the World Wide Web, so the title should be used only locally. Also, the used workstation should be powerful enough to handle multimedia data
No WWW server is needed. On the other hand this means that some additional features are not used within the title (e. g. context- sensitive graphics) and it can not be accessed via WWW

There are two ways to use the title: First, you can follow the recommended order of pages. You do this by using the BACK and FORWARD button in the toolbar that you can see at the end of this text (note that this is different from the probably similar commands of your WWW browser; they work with pages you actually have visited). Besides this, the toolbar allows you to go directly to the table of contents and to a list of products and terms. The second way is to follow hyperlinks (they should be marked in some way, e. g. underlined, see below), which you are interested in. A hyperlink leads you directly to a related topic, if you don't want to go through the whole title.

The title also contains some external hyperlinks, i. e. links to some pages outside the title on the World Wide Web. They were included to broaden the information content of the title and are marked with the sign: [WWW]
Two points have to be mentioned according to this:

If your computer doesn't have an Internet connection you cannot use this feature and you will get a error message when trying. But you can work with the title itself nevertheless. You will get the basic information you need without having access to the Internet. The only thing you are missing then is some additional information.
Even if you have Internet access, these external links can cause problems, because they can be changed without notice by the owner of the pages these links are pointing to.

To make it easier to orientate yourself, all pages of this title look the same. Notice especially the "title"-icon in the upper left corner of every page. With a mouse-click on this icon you can always go back to this page. In addition to this, pages of related topics have the same "chapter"-icon to the right of the "title"-icon. With a click on it, you go back to the first page of the corresponding chapter.

Everywhere you see this icon, you can click on it to get additional sound information.

Everywhere you see this icon, you can click on it to get an animation sequence displayed.

With this information you should be able to work through the title and to profit of it. Always keep in mind, that playing with a subject is a very efficient way to learn about it.

If you ask why you should deal with this title, you can read about the importance of computer networks (this is a hyperlink) first. Otherwise you can go directly to the table of content (this is another hyperlink).

An introductory text addressing some of the theoretical concepts of computer networks is An Introduction to Data Communications [WWW]></A>.
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Andreas Groessler, 21/08/1995