A local area network or LAN is a collection of devices connected in a physical location, such as a building, office, school, or home. A LAN can be small or large, ranging from a single-user home network to an enterprise network with thousands of users and devices.
Regardless of size, the one defining characteristic of a LAN is that it interconnects devices located in a single, limited area. In contrast, a wide area network (WAN) or metropolitan area network (MAN) covers larger geographical areas. Some WANs and MANs connect many LANs together.
A LAN consists of cables (copper or fiber optic), media converters, wireless access points, switches, routers and other components that allow devices to connect to internal servers, web servers, and other LANs over wide area networks (WANs).
The increasing use of virtualization has also driven the development of virtual LANs, which allow network administrators to logically group network nodes and partition their networks without making major infrastructure changes. For example, in a company with multiple departments, such as accounting, marketing, and administration, computers in each department could be logically connected to the same switch, but segmented to behave as if they were separate, as shown in the following illustration.
Generally, there are two types of LANs: client/server LANs and peer-to-peer LANs.
A client/server LAN consists of several devices (the clients) connected to a central server. The server manages file storage, application access, device access, and network traffic. A client can be any connected device that runs or accesses applications or the Internet. Clients connect to the server either with cables (copper or fiber optic ) or via wireless connections (such as WI-Fi ).
Typically, application suites can be maintained on the LAN server. Users can access databases, email, document sharing, printing, and other services through applications running on the LAN server, with read and write access managed by a network administrator. Most medium to large enterprise, government, research, and educational networks are client/server-based LANs.
A peer-to-peer LAN does not have a central server and cannot handle heavy workloads like a client/server LAN can, so they are typically smaller. In a peer-to-peer LAN, each device has the same hierarchy within the network. Devices share resources and data through wired or wireless connections to a switch or router. Most home networks are peer-to-peer.
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