“Networking” is a generic term that covers a very wide variety of hardware and software and situations. At the end of the day, though, it's all about joining information technology together to share data and applications – communicating, in other words. Generally, networking is categorised by the scale and distance involved.
Starting at the small end, you may simply want to link several devices together in the same room. Traditionally, you would get a bit of wire of some description and plug it in. Examples include a USB hub providing multiple USB sockets for USB printer, USB camera, USB scanner etc, or a Cat5 flylead to connect the computer to an ADSL router. This is your PAN – your Personal Area Network. Nowadays, a PAN is increasingly meant to refer to small wireless devices connecting to each other. You might have a mobile phone with bluetooth networking capability – add a bluetooth 'dongle' (a PAN-handler!) to your computer and the two can talk eg. to transfer an image or backup the address book. Or get a bluetooth headset, and you can wirelessly talk/listen through the phone or the computer.
The next scale up is the LAN, or Local Area Network. This is basically networking the computers and peripherals in a building, mostly seen in offices but increasingly at home too. Again, the traditional way is to string some data cables (“Cat5” being the technical specification that allows up to 100 or even 1000 megabits per second). The wireless extension is the WLAN ie. Wireless LAN. Here we throw out the cables, put in an appropriate bit of hardware into the computers, and link up to a central wireless router (using over-the-air encryption, of course).
Next step up is the MAN, or Metropolitan Area Network. If you need a MAN in your life, you need high-speed connections to other offices or to the internet – and this is high speed comparable to a LAN ie. 100Mbps, not high speed as provided by the retail internet provider. MANs are typically constructed by external parties and are based on physical connections (ie. wire or fibre-optic cable), and found in high-density city-centre locations. They are not common, and not cheap.
The top level is the WAN, or Wide Area Network. Here we are talking about connecting multiple locations across a wide geographical area – from one side of town to the other, or one side of the planet to the other. This is all about telecoms companies. Where an organisation used to need a dedicated line between office A and office B, nowadays it's all done through the internet. Simpler, quicker, cheaper, more flexible, more reliable. All the same, many organisations continue to use dedicated lines to connect offices together. A local and obvious example is the Vanuatu Government, with offices spread far and wide. Not all are linked, of course, but many are so that the employees have access to the internal mail system, financial management system, and other IT services that have been centralised.
PANs, LANs and WANs are simply broad categories of networking. The actual technology involved varies widely, and in Vanuatu exciting times are ahead in terms of the options available to network computers, offices and internet. TVL have plans for high-speed metropolitan-level wireless services, and the Government is developing a new Telecommunications Policy. Stay tuned.
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