Netw208 Week 1 You Decide

Introduction

A WAN , Wide Area Network, connection would be most appropriate to the required scenario. A WAN is a network that links network resources like computers, printers, and other resources at great distances such as over campuses or buildings or might even connect to or more LANS (Local Area Network) together.

Advantage

The main advantage of the WAN is that it:

It allows the employees of an office or of a place to get connected regardless of geographical distance.

WAN allows exchange of mains, data, and files over a physical distant place.

Installation details & requirements

The key components of a WAN, a WAN mainly has 3 most important components. They are as follows:

Routers

WAN connections

Security

The access routers basically act as the gateway between LANs or between the different intranets or networks or even WAN’s.

The connections in a WAN are the actual connectivity points or the access points between sites. Each specific network type has its own connectivity mode for eg an analog modem having specification as V.90 would have a phone line connected as the input for connection.

Last but not the least the final point to be considered is the Security characteristic. Security is a very important feature of a network. To safe guard any attacks on the data or preserve the data and resources a tight security must be maintained in a network.

Coming to the deciding the speed of a network, the speed primarily depends on the capacity and characteristic of the network.

Connecting a WAN

The easiest way to get a WAN is getting two LAN’s interconnected. To connect two or more LAN’s together we need an access router. The access router is basically a connection with the switch or a hub and acts as a gateway.

So by connecting an access router, which is a switch or a hub, a direct connection between the two or more LAN’s is established, a LAN-to-LAN connection.So, mainly it is through the access router forwards the traffic between the two...