Advantages(benefits) of Networking :
- Connectivity and Communication: Networks connect computers and the users of those computers. Individuals within a building or work group can be connected into local area networks (LANs); LANs in distant locations can be interconnected into larger wide area networks (WANs).
- Data Sharing: One of the most important
uses of networking is to allow the sharing of data. Before networking
was common, an accounting employee who wanted to prepare a report for
her manager would have to produce it on his PC
- Hardware Sharing: Networks facilitate
the sharing of hardware devices. For example, instead of giving each
of 10 employees in a department an expensive color printer (or resorting
to the “sneakernet” again), one printer can be placed on the
network for everyone to share.
- Internet Access: The Internet is itself
an enormous network, so whenever you access the Internet, you are using
a network. The significance of the Internet on modern society is hard
to exaggerate, especially for those of us in technical fields.
- Internet Access Sharing: Small computer
networks allow multiple users to share a single Internet connection.
Special hardware devices allow the bandwidth of the connection to be
easily allocated to various individuals as they need it
- Data Security and Management: In a business
environment, a network allows the administrators to much better manage
the company's critical data.
- Performance Enhancement and Balancing: Under
some circumstances, a network can be used to enhance the overall performance
of some applications by distributing the computation tasks to various
computers on the network.
- Entertainment: Networks facilitate many types of games and entertainment. The Internet itself offers many sources of entertainment, of course. In addition, many multi-player games exist that operate over a local area network. Many home networks are set up for this reason, and gaming across wide area networks (including the Internet) has also become quite popular.