Page 82 - Computing E-Book Grade 7

The City School 2021-2022

LAN - Local Area Network:

LAN is an interconnection of computers and

its related devices within a small geographical
area or a building, home, office, school, where

the distance between the computers is small.
Mostly the LANs are built to share vital resources

such as printers and exchanging files. LAN is
also used in providing other services such as

sharing applications, games, files, accessing
the Internet. A speed of LAN is higher than WAN

i.e. 1000 Mbps. Ownership of this network is private and maintained by a single
organization.

WAN - Wide Area Network:

WAN is a computer network that

covers broad and large areas such as

small towns and cities. The design and
maintenance are more difficult than LAN.
Ownership of the network can be private

or public as well. WANs are very complex

to manage by private administrators and
they usually have public ownership. WAN is
a connection between multiple geographic

locations which is composed of multiple LAN’s. The best example of a WAN is

the Internet which connects many smaller LANs and MANs through ISPs. A speed
of WAN is comparatively low than LAN i.e. 150 Mbps. It ranges up to 10000 Km.
WANs are more congested than LANs. WANs have a lower data transfer rate

compared to LANs.

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