What is a NIC

NIC is "network interface card", referred to as the NIC, English name is network Interface cards, referred to as NIC, also known as network adapter (nia-network Interface Adapter). It is used to realize the physical connection between the networked computer and the network cable, provides a physical channel for the communication between the computers, and carries on the high-speed data transmission through this channel.

In the local area network, each network computer needs to install one or more network cards, through the media connector to connect the computer to the network cable system. The NIC completes most of the physical and data link layer functions, including the physical connection between network card and cable, media access control (such as: CSMA/CD), data frame disassembly, frame sending and receiving, error check, data signal encoding/decoding (such as: Manchester code conversion), data string, parallel conversion and other functions.

The network card is one of the most basic parts of the LAN, it is the hardware device that connects the computer with the network. Whether twisted-pair connection, coaxial cable connection or fiber optic connection, it is necessary to use the network card to achieve data communication.

The main work of the network card is to clean up the data on the network, and then to send the data to the net after decomposing it into a packet of the appropriate size. For the NIC, each network card has a unique network node address, it is the network card manufacturer in the production of the ROM (read-only memory chip), we call it the MAC address (physical address), and guaranteed never repeat.

Our daily use of the network card is an Ethernet network card. At present, the network card can be divided into 10M network card, 10/100m Adaptive network card and Gigabit (1000M) network card according to its transmission speed. If only as a general purpose, such as day-to-day office, is more suitable for using 10M network card and 10/100m Adaptive network card two kinds. If applied to the server and other product areas, it is necessary to select Gigabit Network card.