Differences between LANs and WANs

Scope of a LAN is smaller

LAN interconnects devices within a single building or cluster of buildings

LAN usually owned by organization that owns the attached devices

For WANs, most of network assets are not owned by same organization

Internal data rate of LAN is much greater

Characteristics of LANs

Like WAN, LAN interconnects a variety of devices and provides a means for information exchange among them

Traditional LANs

Provide data rates of 1 to 20 Mbps

High-speed LANS

Provide data rates of 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps

Characteristics of WANs

Covers large geographical areas

Circuits provided by a common carrier

Consists of interconnected switching nodes

Traditional WANs provide modest capacity

64000 bps common

Business subscribers using T-1 service – 1.544
Mbps common

Higher-speed WANs use optical fiber and transmission technique known as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)

10s and 100s of Mbps common

Types of Communication Networks

Traditional

Traditional local area network (LAN)

Traditional wide area network (WAN)

Higher-speed

High-speed local area network (LAN)

Metropolitan area network (MAN)

High-speed wide area network (WAN)