Networks
Today you are going to learn a little bit about networks and how computers talk to each other.
Before we start with the fun stuff, I have a few points to make:
If you want to talk to someone, you could just stick your head out the window and yell, or you could use the phone to call your friend directly. I think you'll agree the 2nd way is more effective. In order to talk to someone on the phone, you need 2 things, a phone, and a phone #. Computers talk to each other in much the same way, except instead of a phone, they use a "network card" and instead of a phone number, it is called an IP address.
Each computer on a network needs an IP address (go here or here to find out more about what an IP address is.) When a network such as ours is built, the administrator must give each computer it's own, unique IP, just like every house gets it's own phone number.
An IP address is a series of 1-3 digit numbers separated by a period, it might look like this: 24.67.128.6. Valid addresses range from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255, a total of about 4.3 billion addresses. Shouldn't run out too soon.
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Every computer on the internet or other network has it's own IP. In our lab, your computer's IP is shown on the desktop when you login. The IP for your machine looks like 10.17.8.xx, where the xx part will be different for every machine.
Now we are going to set up a network game. You need to do 3 things first:
- Get into groups of about 4 students.
- On your desktop, next to the Dropbox shortcut is a shortcut to the Student Projects share. Double-click to enter the Student Projects drive.
- Inside the Student Projects drive there in an InfoPro folder. Double-click to enter it.
- Inside that folder in one called TetriNet, open it, you should see something like this:
Run the program TETRINET.exe (double click on it) and wait for Mr. Eberts' instructions.