What is the difference between the Local Area Network and Wide Area Network?

If you have an Internet connection at home or office, or read newspapers regularly update the latest trends in technology, you can often see references to the networks. Computer networks have been associated with industry and government a few decades ago. In modern times, with a home network is very common. Both Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN) are used for computer networksusers.

A typical use of a LAN to provide Internet connectivity to all users simultaneously in a house with a single Internet connection. All Internet-enabled devices available in the home can be configured as nodes on a network and can be connected to the Internet through a computer designated for this purpose. LAN can also be used to connect workstations in an office environment in a similar way to provide access to shared resources such as printers.

A LAN uses10BaseT twisted pair cables or wireless networks to connect computers to form a network. There are a number of vendor-specific connectivity solutions available to the private LAN topologies.

WANs are also made of computer networks - the difference between a LAN and a WAN is one of degree. A WAN can consist of thousands together a LAN. A LAN is a building that typically cover a WAN can cover a large geographic area, as well as the regional or national boundaries.In a LAN, the distance is usually in the order of the feet as opposed to a WAN, where the distances of the order of thousands of kilometers.

A WAN is implemented by using lines leased from a service provider or using a packet-switched network for transmission of data over the network. One of the most famous examples of a WAN is the Internet.

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A Guide to Network Monitoring for Beginners

Do you know the data that is sent from one computer to another over the wire or wireless network can actually be captured and read? In this guide, we are going to look at the basics of network monitoring. Networking monitoring can be done at any time, either manually by the administrator or in an automated way. The purpose is to capture the traffic that is going in and out of a particular workstation or computer.

Normally, the network monitoring is done at the layer above the layer where you're LAN or Network card is placed. Once the computer identifies any destination, it processes the data packets and triggers them to through the physical network card. Before it could actually reach the LAN card, the network monitor received every incoming or outgoing packet which it parses and stores in its interface for the administrator to look over at a later stage. Thus now we know what network monitoring is.

At times it becomes highly essential for the administrator to take a network monitor capture to understand weird behavior identified on the network and amongst network nodes or computers. There are not of sophisticated Network monitoring utilities available in the market. The one that is packages along with the windows operating system is know as Network Monitor which is easy to use and reveal a lot of interesting information about each and every packet that has been captured. All you have to do is to specify a network interface or LAN interface in the Network Monitor application and it will start the capture what all is coming in and going out.

Apart from this network monitoring can also be done with the use of third party application which will install a network monitoring service in all your client workstations or computers and servers. This service must be installed on each and every workstation and server which would be linked with the monitoring and reporting server. The purpose of this service would be to trigger an alert incase something goes bad in any machine. Almost all the companies today are using such alerting and network monitoring service to get hold on each and every device in their premises. This is essential in those cases where the computer have been compromised or hacked and the administrators are alerted immediately. To proof that you have been hacked, lot of investigations are conducted to gather proof of the incident which can be used for any lawful intercept.

If the network monitor traces have been gathered, they can be sent over to the network forensic department for close watch to identify the source of its origination as every company would like to know from which IP address they have been attacked. This can help in getting hold of the suspected person or at-least the premises from which this happened.

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