LAN is a group of computers and network devices connected together, usually within the same building e.g.: within a school lab, office or your own home.. It is the smallest network compared to the other two networks. The simplest form of LAN is to connect two computers together. A network which consists of less than 500 interconnected devices across several buildings is still recognised as a LAN.
Inexpensive hardware used in LAN previously includes twisted pair, coaxial cables and the higher end is fiber optic or wireless. However, coaxial cables are now being replaced by a higher speed cabling system such as CAT5 using RJ45 connectors.
LAN is a very high speed network (from previously 10Mbps) to 100Mbps, which is faster than MAN and WAN.
Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)
MAN can be defined as a group of computers and network devices connected together within a large physical area It is a high speed network that connects a collection of LANs and handles a bulk of communication activities within a metropolitan area or the same geographical area, for instance a city e.g. within a city or town. Companies that have several branches within the Kuala Lumpur city such as banks, might find a MAN useful to them. In this case, setting up a MAN across long distances can be best connected using fiber optics.
MAN often acts as a high speed network (although not as fast as a LAN) to allow sharing of regional resources. However the area covered by a Man is relatively smaller than the area covered by WAN
WAN is the largest network of all network types. It can be considered as a collection of LANs or MANs or the mix of two with a very large geographical area, for instance a country or even beyond the border e.g.: between KL and London. The Internet is the largest WAN in the world using combinations of many types of media such as telephone lines, cables and radio waves.
An example in the society using WAN is the banking organisation. Local banks have always maintained their business online by connecting all computers of their branches in the countries. International banks also use WAN to connect their computers all over the world. A device called a router is needed to connect the MANs and LANs all over a large physical area.
A router is a special networking device that connects two or more different networks and keeps data flowing between them. A router makes all the different networks communicate, such as connecting LAN to LAN, LAN to WAN or WAN to WAN. The transmission media in WAN uses the fibre optic cable. WAN is still considered a fast network with speeds 20 – 2000 Kbps, but slower than LAN and MAN.
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