WAN

A Wide Area Network (WAN) is a network that spans a large geographic area. Whether across a city, a county or across several countries, and that connects multiple Local Area Networks (LAN).

The network inside a business office, for instance in Oxford, would likely be a Local Area Network (LAN). The same business may have another office in Aberdeen, for instance, that could again have a LAN. If those two networks were then connected you would have a wide area network. The parts of a WAN could potentially be anywhere in the World. There is also no limit to the number of LAN that can connect to each other. No matter what the WAN joins together or how far apart the networks are, the end result is always intended to allow different smaller networks in different locations to communicate with one another.

A business may have a WAN that consists of connections to its headquarters, branch offices and cloud services. This enables data sharing between locations and can save having to install resources such as a server on each site. Instead of each site for instance having its own server, each site accesses the resource at one central site.

A wide area network is generally private and is used to connect different sites of a business to each other. But they can be used to connect any networks together. The basis of the internet itself is a wide area network connecting millions of smaller networks together to allow communication across them.

Whether you need more information, need help planning a WAN or need to review your existing WAN, to see what we can do for you please contact us