Differentiation between LAN and WAN

LAN: - LAN is called a Local Area Network. They are privately owned networks within a single building or campus of up to a few kilometers in size. Most of LAN’s use Bus or Ring Topology for connection and are illustrated below:

They are used to connect personal computers and workstations in company offices and factories to share resources and exchange information. Traditional LANs run at speeds of 10Mbps to 100Mbps, have low delay and make very few errors. Newer LANs operate at 10Gbps. Various topologies are possible for broadcast LANs.

WAN: WAN is called a Wide Area Network. WAN spans a large geographical area often a continent or country. WAN contains a collection of machines, traditionally called as hosts. These hosts can be on LANs and are connected by subnets or also called communication subnet. They are owned by a telephone company or internet service provider. The subnet carries the messages as like as telephone system from speaker to listener. The network contains many transmission lines each connecting a pair of routers. A packet is sent from one router to another via one or more intermediate router. The packet is received at each intermediate router in its entirety. A second possibility for a WAN is a satellite system. These networks are inherently broadcast networks.