Local Area Network

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Local Area Network (LAN) Teacher: Student: Course: CIS 345 LAN Local-Area-Network(LAN) : It is a relatively small network (compared to a WAN) covering small areas like a room, an office, a building, a campus etc. If you connect two computers for sharing data, you have a LAN. The number of computers connected on a LAN may be up to several hundreds, but most of the time, LANs are made up of more or less a dozen machines. To connect two computers, you may only link them using a cable. If you want to connect more, then you need a special device called a hub, which acts like a distribution and link point. Cables from the different computers’ LAN cards meet at the hub. If you want to connect your LAN to the Internet, then you need a router instead of a hub. Using a hub is the most common and easiest way of setting up a LAN. There are however other network layouts, called topologies. You don’t necessarily have only computers on a LAN. We tend to use certain connectivity technologies, primarily Ethernet and Token Ring. Most of local area networks are built with relatively inexpensive hardware such as Ethernet cables, network adapters, and hubs. Wireless LAN and other more advanced LAN hardware options also exist. You can also connect printers and other devices which you can share. For instance, if you connect a printer on a LAN and configure it to be shared among all users on the LAN, print jobs can be sent to that printer from all computers on the LAN. Ethernet Ethernet is a physical and data link layer technology for local area networks (LANs). Ethernet was invented by engineer Robert Metcalfe. When first widely deployed in the 1980s, Ethernet supported a maximum theoretical data rate of 10 megabits per second (Mbps). Later, so-called "Fast Ethernet" standards increased this maximum data rate to 100 Mbps. Today, Gigabit Ethernet technology further

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