There are 3 main groups of rquirements for any network: 1)Physical requirements(hardware): including the PC, NIC(network interface card) installed into your PC, media( copper cables, optic fibres, wireless) and netowrk devices like switches, routers, access points,modems.... 2) Logical requirements: This is the set of protocols (rules,programs) that are necessary to establish connection between the users.There are lots of protocols, each with certian features and functions.Together these constitute the TCP/IP suite of protocols. N.B: to test that all protocols are installed correctly, go to your command prompt and type the following: C:/> ping 127.0.0.1 There should be 0% loss of packets. 3) Applications: These are the browsers which are responsible for interpreting and presenting the data. Examples of browsers include: Interent Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Netscape Navigator. Browsers are able to interpret text and images, however to present media(sound, movies,animations), they need certain plug-ins to be installed.