What does a network card do in a computer?
A network card is often referred to as an Ethernet card and can come as either wired or wireless. Cards have historically been fitted as an add on by using the expansion bus on a PC board, however most modern machine have them built onto the Motherboard as standard. Wired cards usually conform to either a 10-Base-2, 10-Base-T – 10-Base-1000 standard. Base T uses the RJ45 plug interface wheras the older Base-2 use a BNC (British Naval Connector) to interface with the network in use. There are other even older standards than the Base-2 but 99.9% of the time the Base-2 / Base-T option is the one you will find. Wireless cards conform to a base protocol of 802.11. Many variants are available as faster standards have been introduced. A network card’s job is to listen and monitor the traffic passing it on the attached network. When it recognises a data packet addressed to it’s IP address (or other network protocol identifier in use) it will accept the packet and pass it on to the PC attached.
