network

Other Definitions
network (dict)

A wide variety of systems of interconnected components are called networks. Specific examples include:

television networks
transport networks,

roads,
railroads,
shipping routes and
airlines,
pipelines (gas, petroleum, water, sewage),

electric circuits - a network of electrical components.
digital network - a coupled network of digital (binary) components, for combinational or sequential logic (state machine) implementation
electricity networks (electric power - generation, transmission and distribution).
social networks and business networks and entrepreneurial networks, studied in sociology and economics

when people meet with each other either for socializing or for assistance, the practice is sometimes referred to as networking. Informal meetings of people are sometimes referred to as the Old Boy Network.
sexual networks
criminal networks

computer networks, which transfer information between computers. (Specific configurations include star networks and grid networks.) The Internet is a large-scale computer network. Also, a website and the whole World Wide Web are networks of webpages, a link web. Note: A distinction is made between wide area networks, (WANs) and local area networks (LANs)
telecommunications networks

public switched telephone networks, which route audio signals from one telephone to another
radio networks, which create and distribute radio programming
television networks, which create and distribute television programming
financial networks, for applications such as funds transfer and credit card authorization.

network externality in economics
neural network

In mathematics, a network is usually called a graph. To put it another way, network theory is the applied mathematics counterpart of graph theory. General-purpose mathematical models of network structures and associated algorithms have been developed in graph theory. Computer network routing is a direct application of graph theory to the real world. Networks can be characterized in a number of different ways. For example, many networks are observed to be scale-free networks, in which a few network nodes act as "very connected" hubs.

Network

Further reading