[WEB4LIB] LAN versus WAN

[Brian Williams]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Ed Veal wrote:

> I know this is a bit off topic but can someone help me out. What is
> the technilogical diference between a Local Area Network and a Wide
> Area Network? I do not think that it is just the geographical area. I
> think that they use diferent routing tech. Is this true and if so what
> is it that is diferent?
> 

Generally the LAN is in one building and the WAN is across more than one
building. There's some fine line, actually, that we don't worry about too
much. 

Generally all the routers of the wan and lan will be running the same
routing protocol, ie rip or eigrp, but in a local area net, you might not
need a router. The lan can exist with just the, say, tcpip, running
between machines and with maybe a hub or switch if need be. When you have
two networks that have to be connected, then you need a router. But that
could be in just one building. We have several networks in our main site
in one building. I tend to refer to that as a LAN.

When you connect two networks that are in different buildings, then I call
that a WAN, and then you have routers in both locations and the line
between them may be one of several kinds of technology that require
equipment to translate the signals to ethernet, say CSU/DSU's at each site
connecting on the one hand to the routers and on the other to a
dedicated phone line.


Brian Williams			brianw at multnomah.lib.or.us
Automation Manager	  	5032044627 at mobile.att.net (pager)
Multnomah County Library	 (503) 248-5227 (v) 
801 SW 10th  Portland, OR 97205  (503) 248-5226 (f) 
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