Essential Guide to Computing: The Story of Information Technology, The

LAN to LAN Connections: Campus Networks

As large companies added more and more LANs, as in one for each department, they discovered that in order to be really useful, some applications, like e-mail, need to traverse individual LANs. They also noticed that people and projects didn't always fall within the borders of a small network. Two kinds of choices presented themselves: either merge the LANs into one large system or find some way to link them. Merging didn't make sense, since the LAN's pipes weren't fat enough to handle hundreds of computers and dozens of servers. Neither Ethernet nor Token Ring, for example, does well with hundreds of nodes, nor can they function over anything other than short distances. Companies thus responded with strategies ...