Understanding networking hardware jargon

[Khalil Ahmed]

I am not a hardware person, but it seems more and more in my job I have to deal with hardware vendors who end up talking a language I do not understand. The environment I work in has switches, a variety of HP-UX servers networked via fibre, we have a SAN (EVA5000) as well. When I read any of the HP glossaries I see terms like Host Bus Adapter (HBA), LUNS, Controller Cards, 8 Port/16 Port Switches, NICs etc etc. Can anyone recommend an idiots guide (or guides) that will help someone like myself to get a basic understanding of what these things are and how their function in the big picture. Even if you could just simply recommend me a good book, alternatively a number of easy to understand white papers.

Thanks

Khalil

PS: I wasn't certain which forun to post this message too, so you may see it appear in more than one forum.

[OLARU Dan]

1. "Computer Networks", Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-038488-7

2. "Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 15th Edition", Scott Mueller, QUE, ISBN 0-78-972974-1

Also see this Website: http://www.upgradingandrepairingpcs.com/

3. Web resources (search "computers for beginners", "networking for beginners" or "networks for dummies" in Google):
http://www2.rad.com/networks/1997/nettut/mainmenu.html

http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/productCd-0764516779.html

http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/productCd-0764517600.html

http://www.bcentral.co.uk/technology/NetworksGuide.asp?MSID=af26ba3935cd4e0f9ef7fd629fd720df

http://www.grassrootsdesign.com/intro/index.php

[Stuart Teo]

Khalil,

www.google.com can probably answer most of your questions. :)

[John Collier]

Khalil,

In my experience, you may find that you receive many more and much higher quality answers to your questions if you take the time to recognize the effort that people put forth to answer your questions. The link below shows which questions you currently have with answers that have not been acknowledged with some kind of point assignment:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/pageList.do?userId=BR155473&listType=unassigned&forumId=1

Once there is nothing that shows when you follow that link other than a message that states that 'there are no questions posted by this user with a reply that the user has not assigned points' then you know that you have thanked each person for the amount of free time that they have dedicated to trying to help you with your problems.

Please remember that this is NOT a forum that is staffed by people who get paid for the answers they supply. Just like you, they donate their free time here.

Assigning points to each answer is a small price to pay for all of the answers that you get even if each answer doesn't solve your problem.

It's just considered common courtesy...

On the subject of points, please assign my post a zero (0). I don't want any for this entry.