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In today’s world, computers are an integral part of doing everything associated with running a business day to day. With email, on-line meetings and research needing to be done over the Internet, it is rare to find a computer in a business setting that does not have Internet access. There is another aspect to business computing that can sometimes be overlooked, especially in a smaller office or business environment: computer networking.
Computer networking is different from simply having computers with internet access. Computer networking means that not only can the computers get on-line, but they can also talk to each other as well as to local or remote servers. There are many advantages to this, especially for businesses. A computer network can consist of as few as two computers or might be many hundreds of computers and work stations.
One big advantage to computer networking is the ability of an employee to access files on their primary computer from a computer they may be working on in another office or even another floor. Computer networking also allows larger offices with many employees to deploy software to many work stations at once by allowing access to the software or application from a central server, rather than having to install the application to each and every computer. Obviously, this is a big advantage when the network administrator is dealing with several hundred computers that all need access to the same software application.
Yet another benefit is allowing remote access to work files and applications when they are at home or on the road. This is very helpful if an employee forgets a critical file or even a presentation or needs to access up to date data from a sales meeting or other out of town event. This can prevent a lot of headaches when away from the office.
