we often fireman networks that we're comparing two different things which are kind of similar so you might for example have land versus one so a local area network versus a wide area network you might have a mesh topology for a network compared to a star topology and here's another one you've got the idea that you've got client-server networks and peer-to-peer networks so let's just cover those two and sure the differences really between the two so let's cover first off how you can identify the two all right so here on the left-hand side I'm gonna do a client-server Network and it is so easy to identify a client-server Network because you will have this this server that is how you know you are dealing with a client-server network it has a server in it if it has a server in it it's a client's home network I'm going to say that's over every time multiple times and in many different ways I can because it should be so easy to identify these things look here that is how you know you have a client-server network because it has a server you're more likely to have this maybe at your school and really code the idea is that you can log into this computer here you may save a file onto that computer but what's actually happening is that the files not being stored in the computer there it's actually being but and this is you don't know this is happening in the background it's being sent to a server and it will store it there and that means that if you log in to a different computer one day maybe in a different room then you will still have access to all your files so you can then retrieve that file if you wanted to open it and then edit it and save it and then that we sent back to this server that is a client-server network your peer-to-peer network is much more likely what going to be what you have at home not guarantees you're going to have this idea that you might have a well you'll still have a central switch you might have a PC connected to that in some sort of way you might have another PC in your in your house and it's possible you can have two maybe that's a laptop or something like that and then you'll have maybe a phone which is connected wirelessly assume whatever something like that but you know what you don't have you don't have a server all right I just want to make that sort of clear you could easily you could a phone over here you could have a phone but it's still client serve on the left-hand side because of this this server here but on the right-hand side look no server there is no server so it is peer-to-peer all right and let's just cover briefly what a server does and what a server is okay so a server and this is good this isn't the best description but it provides this service I know it's sort of like using the word in a slightly different way that's service it's one of these things where maybe a better served by an example it could be for example a file server so a file server will hold like I showed it before all the files and that you own and then distribute them to the client that you will happen to be using at any given time so at any time a computer accesses the server and uses it that computer becomes a client or it could be an application server an application server will control what programs are installed on a computer and do things like keep our and programs are up to date and lets you install things quite nice and easily but we'll come to that in a moment okay so before your files are on this central server here it means that backups can be done easily because one computer essentially needs to be backed up this is faster because you're not going to different computers and it's also going to be more reliable because it's less likely you're going to like forget to accidentally backup one of them applications can be installed essentially and pushed out one to all computers on the network so if you've got the latest web browser to install on all the computers if you think about at home you'd have to go from individual from your PC to your laptop and install it twice but on a client server network you can just push a button on the server and it will cause every client connected to it to be upgraded to the latest version and kind of because of all your files and your applications in one place it means that security can be controlled centrally as well so I can force every computer to have the latest version of antivirus installed for example and that way I've got a bit more confidence that my computers can protect themselves against any sort of attack from malware but there are some you know significant disadvantages for client-server networks first off is the cost that involved in them so for example I have to then money to buy this server and the server has to be a pre usually a pretty powerful PC if it's gonna if it's gonna serve any sort of significant size network so there's a cost to setup for that but there's also the cost that if you're dealing with again a school network or an office network that somebody's probably gonna be big paid to maintain this server so to stop it from collapsing and to stop your whole network to then fall fall down shortly afterwards so there's definitely a cost issue here because you have to pay that person a salary you've also got the idea that should the worst happen and the server goes down you've got a central point of failure so if the server collapses your whole network might collapse now it depends kind of what server goes down so you might have for example your file server go down that means that nobody can access the files that would be awful but maybe if a print server went down that wouldn't be too much of an issue just go so it means that nobody will be able to print their files but certainly a server going down may break the network ok so when we're comparing and contrasting this to a peer-to-peer really it's just the opposites that we have to think about here so for example backups can't be done essentially so they take longer to do and you are much more likely to sort of like miss a file because you have to worry about backing up several different devices on that network and like I said we really are dealing with opposites here so your programs and files are on each computer might be different that can be an issue so if you've got an essential program I don't know something like Microsoft Word install on one computer and you won't miss out have it installed in another so you might not be able to work on that that computer security can very kind of massively are depending on device and how often that is updated and that you know it can be a big issue because often attacks really are just looking for the weakest of ice and the network and they'll exploit that however they are cheaper you know that is we talked about this they are you don't employ some need to look after any server and you don't have to actually buy the server itself and likewise you don't have to worry about a server crashing a cake an individual computer breaks that computer can't be used but you don't have to worry about that central point of failure which could bring down the entire network and many differences between client server and peer-to-peer if you found that video useful please hit the like button and hit subscribe to the channel keep learning and revising more computer science by clicking on the videos linked here