Week 2

Types of Networks

• LAN - Local Area Network (building)
• WAN - Wide " " (satellite)
• PAN - Personal " " (around a person)
• MAN - Metropolitan " " (city)
• Many other "-ANs" exist at different scales

How a LAN works

• Connects devices in a bounded area (campus, room, etc.)
• Uses Ethernet or Wi-Fi to communicate

Topology - the architecture/layout of a network

• Bus - devices strung one t the next in a line; simple but no redundancy
• Ring - similar to bus but forms a loop; one-way traffic means no collisions, predictable but not efficient
• Mesh - every device connected to each other, lots of redundancy but not efficient, non-scalable, expensive

often used for "core" infrastructure that is essential to a network

• Star - very common in LANs; central device that connects all devices or "nodes," efficient but heavily reliant on central device
• Star-Mesh - backbone devices are meshed, user devices are stars; balances scale and redundancy