If you want to share some files or data between two or more computers then we have make a network between computers. Computer networks are used to share files and data between computers like sharing file in office or sharing file from one city to other city. There are many types of networks depending upon the geographical range. In the below text I will describe about different types of networks.
Local area network (LAN)
Local area network is the network which is made within the office, room or building. For example in an office there are 5 computers. One computer is for secretary and it has printer attached to her computer. Now that printer can be shared to other computers by networking. This type of networking is called local area network. One computer may also be used to store large files and other computers can access these files through network. The network is made by connecting cables from all computers to a single device which has ports in it.
There are different technologies used to connect local area network:-
- Bus technology
- Ring technology
- Star technology
There are other types of network technologies also like mesh technology.
In bus technology all the computers are connected to single wire also called a bus. If any computer in the network stops working then others computers can still share files and data between them. Bus this technology is oldest technology used in networking.
In ring technology the computers are connected with each other in ring or circle form. For example one computer connects to each computer on both sides. If one computer wants to send file to destination that is not near it than this file is transferred through residing computers and so on.
Star technology is just like ring technology but it has a device called switch in center that is connected to all the computers in the ring. The other computers are connected to switch through hub. So if one hub (computer) wants to transfer data to other hub (computer) then it sends data to switch and then switch transfer that data to the destination hub.
Examples of local area network (LAN)
Here are the examples of LAN:-
- Networking in home, office.
- Networking between two computers.
- Wi-Fi (When we consider wireless LAN)
Wide area network (WAN)
Wide area network is a network which is used to connect different local area networks (LAN). Local area networks are connected to one another through a device called router. There may be used many router to connect large amount of LANs. The big example of wide area network is internet. On internet we transfer files from one computer to other. There is ftp, http and https protocols are used to transfer files on the internet. Ftp stands for file transfer protocol.
Example of Wide area network (WAN)
- Internet is the example of WAN.
Metropolitan area network (MAN)
This type of network is not as big as WAN but bigger than LAN. Metropolitan area network is used within college or within city. So it has high range than LAN. This type of network is also used for communication in military.
Examples of Metropolitan area network (MAN)
- Networking between banks in a city.
- Used in air reservation.
Personal area network (PAN)
The network used to connect different devices like we connect our pc, mobile and PAD to one another. This type of network has not wide range but it makes over life much easier. If the devices are within the range of network then we can share files and data between them.
Examples of Personal area network (PAN)
- The good example of personal area network is Bluetooth.
Other types of networks
We can also classify networks in different ways like client server network, peer to peer network, application server network. In these networks we use mostly LAN, WAN and MAN.