Cisco Networking Simplified

Part VI. Moving Traffic Across the Street and the World

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• Campus Networks and Hierarchical Design 186

• Optical Technologies 192

• Broadband Technologies 198

• WAN Technologies 206

• Traffic Engineering with MPLS 214

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Ever notice that computers seem to talk faster with each other when communicating across a local-area network (LAN) versus talking with a computer in another city, state, or country? The reason is cost: It costs a lot of money to transfer traffic across the country as opposed to transferring that same rate of traffic to a computer in the next room.

LANs are speedy and relatively low-cost. Want to transmit 100 Mbps ...