Also known as: local area network, wide area network

A LAN (local area network) covers a small area such as a home, office, or building, while a WAN (wide area network) spans long distances and ties many networks together — the internet being the largest WAN of all.¹²

Overview

A LAN connects nearby devices over Ethernet and Wi-Fi, usually through a switch and a single IP subnet, giving high speed and low latency within one site. A WAN links such sites across cities or continents over leased lines, fiber, or the public internet, at greater distance but typically lower speed and higher latency. The boundary between them is a router acting as the gateway: the LAN side faces inward, the WAN side faces out.

Where it fits

The LAN-versus-WAN distinction is mostly about scope, and it shapes how a distributed system is laid out. A GopherTrunk site keeps its capture nodes and storage server on a fast local LAN, then reaches across the WAN only to publish results or pull in remote feeds — keeping the bandwidth-heavy raw data local and sending just the decoded output over the slower wide-area link.

Sources

1. Local area network — Wikipedia, on networks covering a small area. ↩

2. Wide area network — Wikipedia, on networks spanning long distances. ↩

See also

• Router
• Gateway
• Network switch
• IP address
• Ethernet
• Wi-Fi