One end of the network cable connects to the NIC on a host and the other connects to the network. In this case, the cable directly connects to another host. At this stage do not worry about network cables and how the hosts communicate across the network. This will be covered in detail later in the chapter. At this stage it is important to understand how hosts connect to a network.
In Figure 1-1, the hosts are “networked” and can share information. This network is effective, but not scalable. If you have more than 2 hosts to this “network”, it will not work without a separate NIC card for each connection and that is not scalable or realistic. For more than 2 hosts to be networked, you require a network device such as a hub. Figure 1-2 shows three hosts connected to a hub.