What Is LAN?

LAN stands for Local Area Network. Local Area Network (LAN) is method of connecting more than one computer. The scope of local area network is private network, single building or small area up to few kilometres. To exchange information in different companies or schools or universities used to connect personal computers and workstations. Local Area Network (LAN) is used to share expensive hardware and software. It helps us to reduce the chances of data lost. Local Area Network (LAN) is secure and provides us complete security to our data.

Different broadcast systems are used in Local Area Network (LAN) such as bus topology, ring topology, star topology, mesh topology and mix topology etc.  Different transmission media are used by Local Area Network (LAN) such as Cable Network and wireless Network. The cable used in Local Area Network (LAN) is expensive and time taking. Different hard wares are used in Local Area Network (LAN) such as computers, network interface cards (N.I.C), printer, modems and cables. Personal computers are in two from, client and server. Server is the computers that manages and controls all activities of client. The software used in Local Area Network (LAN) is called network operating system (NOS).

LAN stands for Local Area Network. When we connect computers to each other by using any kind of media (e.g. cable) then this is called network. We have different kinds of network. One is called LAN (Local Area Network) and other is called WAN (Wide Area Network). When the computers connected to each other are located in a small building or area then it is called local area network. A LAN can be comprised of two or more computer connected to each other.

If a LAN is consists of a central computer (Server) then it is called a Domain. If there is no computer existing, then it is called Workgroup. In a domain, there are two types of computers: a server and a client. Server computers are normally the center point of a LAN and provide different services to Client computers.
For examples, we can turn to office computer networks. In an office computer network, a server is responsible to give access to only authorized users and to share the resources (like printer, internet etc). Normally a server is a power computer with huge memory and very fast processing speed as compared to a client computer.

WAN is a wide area network and it covers more geographical area than the LAN. LAN is easy and less expensive network as compared with WAN.