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Local Area Network

A local area network (LAN) connects computers and devices within a small geographic area like a home, school, or office. LANs use technologies like Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and fiber optic cabling to transfer data at high speeds over short distances without leased telecommunication lines. Common LAN topologies include switches connected to end devices and sometimes a router for external access. LANs were developed in the 1970s to interconnect research computers and now connect all types of personal computers, servers, printers and other networking devices within an organization.

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162 views4 pages

Local Area Network

A local area network (LAN) connects computers and devices within a small geographic area like a home, school, or office. LANs use technologies like Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and fiber optic cabling to transfer data at high speeds over short distances without leased telecommunication lines. Common LAN topologies include switches connected to end devices and sometimes a router for external access. LANs were developed in the 1970s to interconnect research computers and now connect all types of personal computers, servers, printers and other networking devices within an organization.

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ajaydashora14
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Local area network

local area network (LAN) is a computer network covering a small physical area,
like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school, or an airport. The
defining characteristics of LANs, in contrast to wide-area networks (WANs),
include their usually higher data-transfer rates, smaller geographic place, and lack
of a need for leased telecommunication lines.

ARCNET, Token Ring and many other technologies have been used in the past,
and G.hn may be used in the future, but Ethernet over unshielded twisted pair
cabling, and Wi-Fi are the two most common technologies currently in use.

Contents
• 1 History
o 1.1 The personal computer
o 1.2 Cabling
• 2 Technical aspects
• 3 See also
• 4 References

• 5 External links

History
As larger universities and research labs obtained more computers during the late
1960s, there was increasing pressure to provide high-speed interconnections. A
report in 1970 from the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory detailing the growth of
their "Octopus" network[1][2], gives a good indication of the situation.

Cambridge Ring was developed at Cambridge University in 1974[3] but was never
developed into a successful commercial product.

Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC in 1973–1975,[4] and filed as U.S. Patent
4,063,220. In 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Metcalfe and Boggs
published their seminal paper - "Ethernet: Distributed Packet-Switching For Local
Computer Networks"[5]
ARCNET was developed by Datapoint Corporation in 1976 and announced in
1977 [6] - and had the first commercial installation in December 1977 at Chase
Manhattan Bank in New York[7]

The personal computer


The development and proliferation of CP/M-based personal computers from the
late 1970s and then DOS-based personal computers from 1981 meant that a single
site began to have dozens or even hundreds of computers. The initial attraction of
networking these was generally to share disk space and laser printers, which were
both very expensive at the time. There was much enthusiasm for the concept and
for several years, from about 1983 onward, computer industry pundits would
regularly declare the coming year to be “the year of the LAN”.

In reality, the concept was marred by proliferation of incompatible physical layer


and network protocol implementations, and confusion over how best to share
resources. Typically, each vendor would have its own type of network card,
cabling, protocol, and network operating system. A solution appeared with the
advent of Novell NetWare which provided even-handed support for the 40 or so
competing card/cable types, and a much more sophisticated operating system than
most of its competitors. Netware dominated[8] the personal computer LAN business
from early after its introduction in 1983 until the mid 1990s when Microsoft
introduced Windows NT Advanced Server and Windows for Workgroups.

Of the competitors to NetWare, only Banyan Vines had comparable technical


strengths, but Banyan never gained a secure base. Microsoft and 3Com worked
together to create a simple network operating system which formed the base of
3Com's 3+Share, Microsoft's LAN Manager and IBM's LAN Server. None of these
were particularly successful.

In this same timeframe, Unix computer workstations from vendors such as Sun
Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics, Intergraph, NeXT and Apollo
were using TCP/IP based networking. Although this market segment is now much
reduced, the technologies developed in this area continue to be influential on the
Internet and in both Linux and Apple Mac OS X networking—and the TCP/IP
protocol has now almost completely replaced IPX, AppleTalk, NBF and other
protocols used by the early PC LANs.
Cabling
Early LAN cabling had always been based on various grades of co-axial cable, but
IBM's Token Ring used shielded twisted pair cabling of their own design, and in
1984 StarLAN showed the potential of simple Cat3 unshielded twisted pair—the
same simple cable used for telephone systems. This led to the development of
10Base-T (and its successors) and structured cabling which is still the basis of most
LANs today.

Technical aspects
Although switched Ethernet is now the most common data link layer protocol and
IP as a network layer protocol, many different options have been used, and some
continue to be popular in niche areas. Smaller LANs generally consist of one or
more switches linked to each other—often with one connected to a router, cable
modem, or ADSL modem for Internet access.

Larger LANs are characterized by their use of redundant links with switches using
the spanning tree protocol to prevent loops, their ability to manage differing traffic
types via quality of service (QoS), and to segregate traffic via VLANs. Larger
LANS also contain a wide variety of network devices such as switches, firewalls,
routers, load balancers, sensors and so on.[9]

LANs may have connections with other LANs via leased lines, leased services, or
by 'tunneling' across the Internet using VPN technologies. Depending on how the
connections are made and secured, and the distance involved, they become a
Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), a Wide Area Network (WAN), or a part of the
Internet.

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