Types of networks

In this section, we will discuss the different type of networks:

• Local Area Network (LAN): LAN is a small network within a home, an office or even a building.
• Wide Area Network (WAN): The purpose of a WAN is simply to extend a LAN over a large geographic distance. Imagine you own a company—at the moment, it's only a single office location; however, as time passes, your business expands to another branch office in another city or country. Since the first branch has all of your main servers and network resources, it becomes the head office. The challenge is to allow the other branch office(s) to share the existing network resources from the head office to the other branch location. The solution is to implement a WAN connection between the offices:

• Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN): A WLAN is where either an Access Point (AP) or a wireless router is implemented on a LAN to provide wireless access to the resources on the LAN. This provides freedom of mobility to the users on the wireless LAN.
• Metropolitan Area Network (MAN): A MAN is a network that is usually larger than a LAN but exists within a single geographic area for sharing resources. This type of network is usually found in cities.
• Storage Area Network (SAN): SAN is a segment on your network that has high-capacity storage appliances. This part of the network is a high speed and specialized area that provides network access to storage.  
• Personal Area Network (PAN): PAN is used to interconnected devices on a personal or independent network. An example is having two Bluetooth-enabled devices connected to share a file.