How is lan hardware connected?

The hardware is usually connected by cat5 or cat6 cables. The wall sockets that they are usually plugged into run to a switch or switches that enable them to connect via more cables to the patch panel where the servers are also connected. each item would have its own static IP address(or in some cases they would use DHCP to assign them) so it could be found on the lan. IP addresses allow the switches and routers to direct the input from the computers to the proper machine.