Local Area Network ( Lan )

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Local Area Network A local Area Network (LAN) is a type of network typically used and connected in a small area, for instance, home, office, school or groups of building, in order to communicate with one another and share resource, such as printer or scanner. Those devices could be connected between each other by wired cable or wireless links, which is typically used as a standard LAN technology called IEEE 802.11. Usually, a local area network consists of computers and peripheral devices connected to a local domain server, which are used to share printers and other resources, such as disk storage, games or applications. Each LAN is either independent from any network or connects to other LANs, and, moreover, can additionally connect to Internet called Wide Area Network (WAN). In terms of practical use, a home network is typically individual LANs and multiple LANs, which refers to a home network setting up a guest network. In this paper, I will expound the main components making up a local area network (LAN), as well as technologies used to build a LAN. Network Components of LANs As mentioned in Cooper (n.d), the main role of a local area network is to connect computers or peripheral devices together in order to exchange data. Not only do LAN include computers and other devices, it requires six critical components to function of making up a local area network, which will be expounded as the following below. • Network Adapter: is an important component of making up LANS, which is used to connect a network and convert computer data into electronic signals. In order to move data packet to and from network interface cards to different shared channels, network adapter associates with network access element named Media Access Control ... ... middle of paper ... ...s to translate the packet back into meaningful form and utilize it with suitable application. Technologies Used to Build a LAN According to Mitchell (2016), WiFi or Ethernet is a modern local area network used for connecting with different devices. Typically, a traditional Wi-Fi LAN operates a single or a few of wireless access points for providing a service to devices within the signal range. The role of access point is to manage networking traffic from connected devices. In terms of home LAN, the access point is wireless broadband routers to perform this role. A traditional Ethernet LAN comprises of one or more switches, hubs or routers, in which each device connects to by Ethernet cables. The network protocol used on LANs is Internet Protocol (IP) and, nowadays, almost networking operating systems have built-in contributing for the required TCP/IP technology.

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