Network Interface Card

We are going to spend a couple of time just to solidify your knowledge of a network interface card. So, the first point is that the network interface card it's what's installed on your computer. It's either built into the motherboard or it's going to be an expansion card like this one right here where it plugs into the motherboard right here and its main role is you simply use it to plug in the network cables into the ports and allows you to communicate on the network.

Fig 1: Network Interface Card

And what happens. Well, we have electrical signals that go in and out of this port and that's our data that goes out onto the network and the data that comes back to us. Now in regards to its acronym the acronym NIC is going to be used a lot in the I.T. world and networking world. So, if you hear NIC just remember that stands for network interface card now in regards to how it looks it can come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes and it can look like you speed thumb drive. It can look like a standard one. It can have a Wi-Fi connector. I mean they really have all sorts of designs and in fact I even have one now where it's literally the size of this right here where there's just a little tiny piece come out the finish where you can pull it out. It looks like the ones for your wireless mouse is where you plug them into your laptop and literally that's all it is. Now this is going to be your standard one-word expansion. There's going to be a standard one word and expansive as well or this is cabled and this is Wi-Fi.

However, when you get into the server world you are going to need a higher level of redundancy and you're going to see network interface cards where they have two ports. So, it has redundancy built in. So, if one of the ports go down or if the cable breaks there's is an issue, then the second one will take effect. And we're talking about things like file servers and web servers where you want a high level of redundancy and uptime. So, you know just don't think of a network interface card as something like this where it has a port or something like this you know it can be a little tiny use beat thumb drive or it plugs in. Or it can have multiple ports. So that's our quick refresher on network interface cards.