What is lan

On a peer-to-peer LAN, each personal computer and device share equally in running the network. The devices share resources and data through a wired or wireless connection to a router. Most home networks are peer-to-peer. A home LAN is a great way to create a connection between every device in your home including PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, printers, fax machines, and gaming devices.

When your devices are connected to your Wi-Fi, you can share files privately with family members, print wirelessly from any device, and access data on other connected devices. A home LAN can also be expanded to include home security systems, smart TVs, home environment controls, and smart kitchen devices.

When these systems are added to the LAN, every system can be controlled from any device and location in the home. A LAN cable is also known as an Ethernet cable. You use Ethernet cables to connect devices to a router in a local area network. Ethernet cables also have specific distances over which they function effectively. For example, for CAT 6 Ethernet cables, that distance is feet. Therefore, any device farther away from the router must connect wirelessly.

If a device doesn't have built-in wireless capability, a wireless LAN Network adapter makes it possible to wirelessly connect the device to a router. A LAN port is the same thing as an Ethernet port. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. The receiving computer needs to interpret these packets back into meaningful data and deliver it to the appropriate application. LAN has the following characteristics: Coverage area is generally a few kilometers. In LAN you can run the multiple devices to share a transmission medium. You can use the different topology mainly bus and ring in LAN.

LAN support a variety of communications transmission medium such as a Ethernet cable thin cable, thick cable, and twisted pair , fiber and wireless transmission. A LAN usually has low cost, installation, expansion and maintenance and LAN installation is relatively simple, good scalability. To provide some insight into the types of requirements that LANs are intended to meet, the following sections discuss some of the most important general application areas for these networks.

With the relatively low cost of such systems, individual managers within organizations often independently procure personal computers for departmental applications, such as spreadsheet and project management tools, and for Internet access.

But a collection of department-level processors won't meet all of an organization's needs; central processing facilities are still required. Some programs, such as econometric forecasting models, are too big to run on a small computer. Corporate-wide data files, such as accounting and payroll, require a centralized facility but should be accessible to a number of users.

In addition, there are other kinds of files that, although specialized, must be shared by a number of users. Further, there are sound reasons for connecting individual intelligent workstations not only to a central facility but to each other as well.

Members of a project or organization team need to share work and information. By far the most efficient way to do so is digitally. Certain expensive resources, such as a disk or a laser printer, can be shared by all users of the departmental LAN.

In addition, the network can tie into larger corporate network facilities. For example, the corporation may have a building-wide LAN and a wide area private network. A communications server can provide controlled access to these resources. LANs for the support of personal computers and workstations have become nearly universal in organizations of all sizes.

Even those sites that still depend heavily on the mainframe have transferred much of the processing load to networks of personal computers. For personal computer networks, a key requirement is low cost.

In particular, the cost of attachment to the network must be significantly less than the cost of the attached device. Thus, for the ordinary personal computer, an attachment cost in the hundreds of dollars is desirable. For more expensive, high-performance workstations, higher attachment costs can be tolerated.

In any case, this suggests that the data rate of the network may be limited; in general, the higher the data rate, the higher the cost. Back-end networks are used to interconnect large systems such as mainframes, supercomputers, and mass storage devices. The key requirement here is for bulk data transfer among a limited number of devices in a small area.

High reliability is generally also a requirement. A LAN could contain just a small number of devices or thousands of devices. The defining factor is not the size but rather that the devices are all in a single location. In contrast, Wide Area Networks , or WANs, are computer networks that connect devices spread across a larger geographic area, while the Internet connects computers worldwide.

A computer can be part of more than one network and for computer programs to respond differently to requests from different networks. LANs are also different from Metropolitan Area Networks or MANs, which are networks with a network topology covering an entire single city or defined geographic area e.

For example, a home user may use the file-sharing feature of Windows to share the family photographs stored on their laptop with other computers in the house. That laptop may also connect to a work intranet which would be an example of a WAN and the Internet but not allow machines on those networks to access the same files. A LAN can consist of many different types of network devices. Next, set up one computer as a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol server by installing a third-party utility.

This will enable all of the connected computers to easily obtain IP addresses. Enter the router's IP address into any Web Browser and log in with the network administrator account when prompted for a username and password. Characteristics of wireless Local Area Network include: high capacity load balancing, scalability, network management system, role-based access control, indoor and outdoor coverage options, performance measuring abilities, mobile device management, web content and application filtering, roaming, redundancy, wireless Local Area Network Application prioritization, network switching, and network firewalls.

Typical solutions include: updating the network adapter driver, resetting the network connection, and checking WLAN AutoConfig dependency services. The majority of Local Area Network problems and solutions are concerned with the matter of security.

There are a variety of strategies for designing a secure Local Area Network. A common approach is to install a firewall behind a single access point, such as a wireless router. Implementing specialized authentication policies enables network administrators to inspect and filter network traffic in order to prevent unauthorized access.

Specific access points can be secured with the use of technologies such as VPNs.