What is a Computer Network? Defintion and Types

A computer network is an interconnection of two or More computers that can exchange information. In other words, a Computer network is a group of computers that are interconnected to each other either wireless and wire to able share information or Exchange information. The computer may be connected via any data communication link, like copper wires, radio links, etc They may be personal computers or large mainframes. 

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The com­put­er net­work may be locat­ed in a room, build­ing, city, coun­try, or any­where in the world. Com­put­er net­works have opened up an entire fron­tier in the world of com­put­ing called the client/Server Mod­el. Com­put­er net­works may boost the rate of organ­i­sa­tion­al learn­ing, which is con­sid­ered the only basic advan­tage in the cur­rent com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment, if they have the best Infor­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion capabilities.

What is a Network?

The process of send­ing data or infor­ma­tion from one device to anoth­er is known as net­work­ing.
Net­works are known as a medi­um of con­nec­tions between nodes (set of devices) or computers.

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A net­work con­sists of a group of com­put­er sys­tems, servers, net­work­ing devices linked togeth­er to share resources, includ­ing a print­er or a file serv­er.
The con­nec­tion is estab­lished by using either cable media or wire­less media.

The following are some of the most common computer network types:

1. PAN (Per­son­al Area Network)
2. LAN (Local Area Network)
3. MAN (Met­ro­pol­i­tan Area Network)
4. WAN (Wide Area Network)
5. HAN (Home Area Network)

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PAN (Personal Area Network)

• The Full form of PAN is Per­son­al Area Networks.
• PAN is a form of com­put­er net­work that con­nects com­put­ers and devices with­in the range of a person.
• PAN Which means a net­work used for com­mu­ni­cat­ing among com­put­ers and com­put­er devices(including tele­phone) with­in a short area.
• Per­son­al Area Net­works (PANs) pro­vide a net­work range with­in a per­son­’s range, typ­i­cal­ly with­in a range of 10 meters (33 feet).
• A Per­son­al Area Net­work con­sists of a com­put­er, phone, tablet, print­er, PDA (Per­son­al Dig­i­tal
  Assis­tant), and oth­er enter­tain­ment devices such as speak­ers, video game con­soles, and so on.
• The con­cept of PAN was cre­at­ed by Thomas Zim­mer­man and oth­er researchers at M.I.T.‘s Media Lab. Its high per­for­mance in terms of flex­i­bil­i­ty and effi­cien­cy makes it ide­al for use in homes, offices, and small net­work areas.

LAN (Local Area Network)

• The full form of LAN is the Local Area Net­work.
• LAN is a form of com­put­er net­work that inter­con­nects com­put­ers with­in a lim­it­ed area such as a school, res­i­dence, lab­o­ra­to­ry, uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus, or office building.
• LANs are com­mon­ly used to con­nect per­son­al com­put­ers and work­sta­tions in cor­po­rate offices so that they can share resources such as print­ers and exchange data.
• Many exper­i­men­tal and ear­ly com­mer­cial LAN tech­nolo­gies were devel­oped in the 1970s. Cam­bridge Ring was devel­oped at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty in 1974. Eth­er­net was devel­oped at Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974. ARCNET was devel­oped by Dat­a­point Cor­po­ra­tion in 1976 and announced in 1977.

MAN (Metropolitan Area Network)

• The full form of MAN is the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Area Net­work.
• MAN is a form of com­put­er net­work that inter­con­nects com­put­ers with each oth­er to extend the net­work over an entire city.
• This net­work is much larg­er than a LAN, which is usu­al­ly restrict­ed to a sin­gle build­ing or loca­tion. This type of net­work can cov­er a range of dis­tances from a few miles to tens of miles, depend­ing on the configuration.
• MAN is designed for cus­tomers who need high-speed connectivity.

WAN (Wide Area Network)

• The full form of WAN is the Wide area Net­work.
• WAN is a form of com­put­er net­work that inter­con­nects com­put­ers at the long-dis­tance trans­mis­sion of data, voice, image, and video infor­ma­tion over large geo­graph­i­cal areas that may com­prise a coun­try, continent.
• In oth­er words, A wide area net­work is a col­lec­tion of local area net­works or oth­er net­works that com­mu­ni­cate with one another.

HAN (Home Area Network)

• The full form of HAN is the Home area Net­work.
• Home area net­work is a com­put­er net­work lim­it­ed to a defined bound­ary like a house or home office. 
• It is a type of IP based LAN which can either be wired or wireless. 
• HAN is a board band con­nec­tion avail­able to users using a wired or wire­less modem. 
• It con­sists of shared devices like fax­es, print­ers, scan­ners etc.