Local-Area Networks and Technologies

Local-area network ( LAN) technologies, as the name suggests, are extremely localized, covering a small geographic area up to only a few thousand meters. For example, they can connect computers within or between buildings, or within a particular department, such as Accounting or Marketing. Whenever there is a situation in which you are able to install your own physical media to connect peripherals, workstations, and terminals, you would employ LAN technologies. Because of their limited range, LANs will not perform well where there is a large distance between sites.

LAN technologies usually operate with the assumption of a single physical media shared among many computers. However, the sharing algorithms ...

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