Macintosh Bible, 8th Edition, The

Networking in a Mac: A Primer

A local network is the computer network in your room, building, or campus. Local networks are also called local area networks. The area seems to have been included to make the acronym LAN pronounceable. But since networking has enough unavoidable acronyms, I'll just stick to the term local network in this chapter.

You can think of the Internet as a connection of local networks all around the world. Your local network has a lot of similarities to the Internet. It uses some of the same network protocols, and you can use some of the same network services, such as a Web server or e-mail, locally or globally via the Internet. On local networks, Mac users often employ file sharing to move files between computers. On the ...