Types of network

One way to categorize the different types of computer network designs is by their scope or scale. For historical reasons, the networking industry refers to nearly every type of design as some kind of area network. Common examples of area network types are:

·         LAN - Local Area Network:

A LAN connects network devices over a relatively short distance. A networked office building, school, or home usually contains a single LAN, though sometimes one building will contain a few small LANs (perhaps one per room), and occasionally a LAN will span a group of nearby buildings. In TCP/IP networking, a LAN is often but not always implemented as a single IP subnet.(1) or in other explanation (LAN) is a network that connects computers and devices in a limited geographical area such as home, school, computer laboratory, office building, or closely positioned group of buildings(1).

·         WLAN - Wireless Local Area Network:

WLAN allows you at home to share an Internet connection in all rooms,
without having to drill holes and put in Network cables between all. In such cases, you would use a WLAN Router, often available as
combination unit of WLAN-router and DSL / ADSL modem. using a Wireless(2).

·         WAN - Wide Area Network:

A wide area network (WAN) is a computer network that covers a large geographic area such as a city, country, or spans even intercontinental distances, using a communications channel that combines many types of media such as telephone lines, cables, and air waves. A WAN often uses transmission facilities provided by common carriers, such as telephone companies. WAN technologies generally function at the lower three layers of the OSI reference model: the physical layer, the data link layer, and the network layer. (2).

A WAN differs from a LAN in several important ways. Most WANs (like the Internet) are not owned by any one organization but rather exist under collective or distributed ownership and management. WANs tend to use technology like ATM, Frame Relay and X.25 for connectivity over the longer distances)

·         MAN - Metropolitan Area Network:

A Metropolitan area network is a large computer network that usually spans a city or a large campus.

Actually, they are a number types of network but those are the common members in network but also there is network that specially used for mobile communicant which is A global area network (GAN) is a network used for supporting mobile communications across an arbitrary number of wireless LANs, satellite coverage areas, etc. The key challenge in mobile communications is handing off the user communications from one local coverage area to the next. In IEEE Project 802, this involves a succession of terrestrial wireless LANs(3)

Those were some types of network but, there are a lot such as

·         MAN - Metropolitan Area Network

·         SAN - Storage Area Network, System Area Network, Server Area Network, or sometimes Small Area Network

• CAN - Campus Area Network, Controller Area Network, or sometimes Cluster Area Network
• PAN - Personal Area Network
• DAN - Desk Area Network(1).