Network software has become firmly established in the life of a man of the 21st century. What features does it provide to ordinary users? How is the interaction between different people organized? What equipment is used for this? Here is an incomplete list of issues that will be considered within the framework of the article.
Capabilities
What does the network software provide in terms of organizing teamwork? All at once you will not describe. First, let's focus on the possibilities of information exchange in global and local networks:
- Email.
- Newsgroups.
- Conversations through the Internet.
- Teleconferences.
- Newsletter.
- Real-time communication tools (which can transmit text, sound and images), and also work together with other applications.
- Videoconferencing.
All this is used to conduct personal correspondence, work with information resources, send out data, send necessary files and notify about news.
Means Used
Speaking about the possibilities of network software for organizing collective activities, it is necessary to pay attention to the software used. So, for communication on the Internet, mail servers play an important role. This is the name of special programs that send messages between subscribers' boxes. The mail client helps to compose, send and display them to the user . Also for the organization of collective activity can serve as a network forum, which is organized in order to conduct discussions and exchange news of a certain direction. For urgent meetings, videoconferencing can be used. They help to organize a lot of different software. The most famous are Skype and Raidcall. But this is all - only a surface of possibilities. Thus, large enterprises are interested in creating their own local networks. And as a reasonable addition - a separate communication line. So let's focus on the technical features of implementing such needs.
What is the network software?
This is an important addition for any enterprise. The capabilities of the network software allow to provide the collective access of the organization to information and computing resources of the network, dynamically distributing them in order to increase the efficiency of data processing and optimally load hardware. The rule of good tone is to have a ready-made plan for responding to a case of failure of individual units of equipment. Drawing an analogy, we can recall the earth's crust. The organization of network software is such that some work at a higher level, the other is aimed at hardware. But everything interacts as a whole. In this case, we can distinguish the following categories of software:
- General software. It is created by the basic applications of individual computers that are part of the network.
- Special software. It is created by application applications that reflect the specific domain for the user when the management task is being implemented.
- System network software. It is a set of tools that support and coordinate all the resources of the computer network as a single system.
OS
Usually, they mean software that is responsible for performing the basic functions in the computer. In the network, they act as the foundation for the organization of the environment of collective activity. Thus, operating systems due to their components provide:
- Interprogram access. In this case, we mean the possibility of organizing links between individual application software complexes, which are implemented in different nodes of the network.
- Access of individual applications to resources (from the user's point of view, first of all, I / O devices are meant).
- Synchronization of various software tools.
- Information exchange.
- Executing the commands received from the terminal, which the operator enters.
- Exchange of a set of data between different computers connected to the same network.
- Remote input of tasks (if it is necessary to work with remotely located terminal).
- Access to data stored in other computers, as well as the ability to process them.
- Protection of information and network resources from third-party access.
The usefulness of operating systems for users
OS significantly facilitates the work of man. So, thanks to them:
- You can establish a sequence of solutions to existing problems.
- The operability of network facilities (hardware and software) is monitored.
- Tasks can be provided with the necessary data, which are stored in different nodes of the network.
- Realized the operational and planned distribution of resources, depending on what needs are currently available to users.
OS Features
The possibilities of network software for an organization require careful tuning and a certain methodology of work. So, it is necessary to take care of the timing and order of receiving information by subscribers, the distribution of the list of solved tasks among all computers on the network, and also assign priority levels of implementation and, if necessary, change the configuration of the computer. Operative management allows you to receive and process information about the origin and objectives of processes, perform the necessary tasks and collect data on the work. In this case, the operating system acts as a dispatcher. It monitors the opening and closing of files, manages the used memory, maintains programs and protects them.
Networking capabilities
This is one of the most important duties of the operating system. Two approaches are considered regarding the support of the possibilities of communication between computers. The first provides for their supply with network facilities that interact with the stand-alone OS. The second approach envisages their availability as part of the operating system itself (it found a wider distribution in the modern world). It should also be noted that the OS has two network functions: server and client. This separation is due to the difference in the tasks that confront them, and which is performed by network equipment. Network software of the server type is aimed at managing resources. Client-oriented is engaged in servicing the needs of its owner with maximum efficiency and speed. At the same time, it is necessary to pay due attention to the platform on which the software functions, as well as its characteristics.
Speed and multithreading
What should be the network software? Organizations of collective activity are only doing their best to work at a speed that is as high as possible. Multithreading plays an important role in this. The essence of this process is rather complicated, but we will deal with it. So, there is a microprocessor that works at high speed, measured in small time units - in cycles per second. They are carried out regardless of the existence of a task. Therefore, the processor often runs idle. To minimize this, the device allocates several separate components that deal with certain areas of action. By changing their size, one can influence the qualitative aspect of the work of the collective. So, accounting, for example, needs to constantly receive data from the local network about available resources and finished products. While a staff of support workers, access to it is needed only to draw up reports on the work done.
Information exchange
That users could work effectively, it is necessary to think about high-quality network software (not forgetting about the equipment). For example, for remote access to an enterprise database, you can configure a modem, through which the work will be conducted, as if within the company. The only conditional limitation is the slow transfer of data. You can also use the tools of group work to distribute access levels. They will be useful in order to organize the consistency of versions of documents over which several users are working. It will not be superfluous to configure the saving of temporary backups, which will be stored on a network server, a separate computer or in the cloud. But it is necessary to control the standardization of data exchange. This will significantly reduce the likelihood of an error, as well as positively affect the speed of transmission of information packets over networks.