What Is The Full Form Of LAN?
The full form of LAN is Local Area Network
A local area network (LAN) is a group of devices joined in one physical location, such as a building, office, or home. LANs are majorly used to connect the workstations and computers in some buildings or workplaces to facilitate the internet process and share common resources.
LAN mostly comprises a small area such as within an office building, school or college campus, and more.
LAN History
- The LAN mechanisms were introduced in the 1970s.
- The Cambridge Ring (Experimental Local Area Network) was invented in 1974 at Cambridge University.
- Ethernet was presented at Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974.
- ARCNET was formed in 1976 by Datapoint Corporation and declared in 1977.
Characteristics of LAN
- LAN transmits a very high speed and data transfer flow which is again a very important factor.
- The flexibility is on point. LAN supports a variety of transmission mechanisms such as an Ethernet cable, fiber, and wireless transmission.
- The best part is its privacy. LAN is completely a separate network, thus no outside administration regulates it.
- LANs normally have a low cost. From installation to extension and maintenance, everything is relatively easy to use at an affordable price.
Advantages Of LAN
- With LAN you don’t have to buy the separate licensed software because it permits sharing of software for each client in a network.
- You can easily manage the data and keep it secure because data is collected on the server computer, that means in only one place.
- It reduces costs in hardware. It enables the sharing of expensive resources like scanners, printers, and more with all of the computers. In this way, it helps in reducing the costs of hardware purchases.
- LAN also gives the ease to share a single internet connection among all the LAN users.
- Enhances the communication experience between connected computers. It is very cheap to perform communication here as data and messages can quickly be shared with the other workstations joined across the network.
Disadvantages Of LAN
- LAN is comparatively affordable. However, the initial setup is pretty high because there is some software required to make a server.
- There are some communication tools like switches, hubs, ethernet cables, routers, and cables that are expensive.
- No privacy. LAN controllers can see and review the individual data files as well as the net history of every user.
- LANs are limited in size and cover only a restricted area.
- The data is stored in a single place so there are severe chances of data security threats.
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