Computer Networks Questions and Answers

What is WAN?

The WAN or Wide Area Network is a kind of network spanning a large geographical area, the most common example is the internet. This is being contrasted to smaller LAN and MANs. The LANs are home or office networks, while he MAN could encompass a campus or even residents of the city, like in the citywide WI-Fi network.

Moreover, the internet is a public kind of WAN, yet there are some other ways of creating a good business model or private version. The private network is somewhat two or more LANs that are connected to each other. For instance, the company with offices in New York and Los Angeles might have their own setup of LAN at every office. Throughout the leased of telephone lines, all of the LANs could surely communicate with each other and that forms WAN.

Moreover, the routers are being used to directing the communications in between the LANs that are communicating on the WAN. The router that is installed upon the leased lines will then read he headers or enveloped on every data packet passing throughout the WAN, sending it to the appropriate LAN. Whenever the packet arrives at LAN, the “switch” would send the data packet to the right machine.

What is a Router?

A router is a specialized tool that is connected from a computer up to more than just a network. It mainly runs software that lets it to move up data from network to network. The routers operate at the layer of the network known as OSI Model- Layer 3. The main function of the router is to connect the networks together and then keep the layer 2 broadcast traffic right under the control. There are actually some companies making routers. The reasons why a router is necessary are the following:

• Restrict the broadcast of the network to the LAN. The network administrator could then break up the network with a very large number of hosts in two smaller types of networks.
• It will act as the default gateway. With the networks today, people would be connected to the internet. Whenever your computer wants to talk to a computer on another network, it does so by sending your data to the default gateway, which is your router.
• They could move the data in between the networks. It works for routing and the transmission of the protocol.
• It gives the best path calculations.
• It gives out route advertisement.

The router is an important thing when it comes to connecting to the internet.

What is a LAN?

The LAN or the local area network mainly consists two or more computers that are connected together in a building or home using both of the hardware or the software. It is being contrasted into WAN or the wide area network like the internet covering larger geographic area. In the LAN, there is a main server or computer, and remote computers known as the clients. By simply making this kind of network in the office or home, the computers connected on it could simply share resources, files and internet connection if desired.

There are two kinds of LAN, these are the wireless or the wired. The wired LAN needs an Ethernet able in order to connect all of the computers physically to the network to the major device known as a switch. The wireless kind of network mainly uses radio waves to communicate, getting rid of the wires. Thus, the hardware used in the network has to be wired or wireless kind.

In terms of setting up a LAN, it is very much easy. All of the operating systems in e Microsoft have also included the built-in networking software. When it comes to the hardware, every computer needs a kind of network interface card and the switch is also needed.