Connecting the World - Networking Essentials

1) Network Scopes: Local Area Network (LAN) vs. Wide Area Network (WAN)

The terms LAN and WAN describe the geographical scope and scale of a computer network.

• Local Area Network (LAN)

  A LAN is a collection of connected devices in a confined physical location, such as a single home, office building, or school campus. The key characteristic is that you (or your organization) typically own and control the networking infrastructure (the switches, routers, and cables).

  • Analogy: A LAN is like the internal telephone system within a single office building. You can call any extension inside the building quickly and freely because it's all part of one private system.
  • Purpose: To allow devices to share resources like files, printers, and a single internet connection with high speed and low latency.

• Wide Area Network (WAN)

  A WAN is a network that connects multiple LANs over a large geographical area. It can span across a city, a country, or even the entire globe. The most famous example of a WAN is the Internet itself. The infrastructure of a WAN (like fiber optic cables and satellite links) is typically owned and managed by a telecommunications provider or Internet Service Provider (ISP).

  • Analogy: A WAN is like the global public telephone network. To call someone in another city (another LAN), your call has to travel over a vast infrastructure that you don't own.
  • Purpose: To connect geographically dispersed offices of a company or to provide general access to the internet.