Wan Network Types

A WAN is a network designed to connect clients across a city, country, or across the world. There are several types of WAN such as Frame Relay, ATM, VPN, and ISDN. ISDN stands for integrated services digital network. ISDN supports video, voice, and data at the same time. The problem with ISDN is the fact that it operates on leased lines and uses the telecommunications’ infrastructure to connect to the remote network. This will increase costs for the company if this type of WAN was selected. Frame Relay is used in a private switched network, is cost effective, and provides high speeds for businesses that need to connect to remote sites. ATM stands for asynchronous transfer mode and is a cell switched network. The ATM network provides a logical connection between two points. VPN is a virtual private network and provides a private and secure connection through public telecommunications systems. The WAN that will work best for the XYZ Company is the frame relay because of its cost effectiveness and the privacy needed for a large company.

Before designing the WAN network, a few points should be considered. First would be installation and maintenance costs. Distributed application reliability would be a key factor if the network server is to house business applications. Network reliability and performance should also be considered and studied in great length. Bandwidth will need to be calculated for the offices to determine what the usage will need to be.

WAN networks work with 3 types of switch technologies which are circuit switching, packet switching, and cell switching. Circuit switching establishes a connection between nodes before the users may communicate. Circuit switching has a bit delay that remains constant during a connection and can emulate packet switching in some cases. Packet switching groups transmitted data into suitable sized blocks. Packet switching can send a sequence of packets over a network in a data stream.