N-GEN Communications Web-based Seminars ©NGCS

Seminar - An Overview of Communications Technologies

Module 7 - LAN, WAN, VPN, WLAN, MAN, FDDI and Optical MANS                                                        Slide 1 of 45 _________________                                                                                  __________

Objectives:

This module provides an introduction to the technologies used for enterprise networking such as: LAN, WAN, VPN, WLAN, MAN, FDDI and Optical MAN.

Enterprise networking has two segment local networking and wide area networking of an enterprise’s resources. The local networking of resources is met by local area networking (LAN) technologies. The well-known LAN technologies are Ethernet and Token Ring. In the last three decades 10 M bps Ethernet and 4 and 16 M bps Token Ring LANs have been adequate to meet enterprise needs. Since the mid 1990s enterprise applications have produced more traffic than can be handled by the legacy LANs. The LANs have evolved to 100 M and 1000 M bps second throughput. Optical fibers are used as a media in LANs. The Wide Area Networking (WAN) technology has also evolved from T-1 over copper wire to G bps over optical fiber. ATM, SONET, WDM, DWDM technologies are available to connect an enterprise’s remote resources.

The Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) industry has emerged as one of the fastest growing segments of the communications industry and has been a saving grace to equipment manufacturers. One market researcher is predicting wireless network cards and WLAN base stations to grow to $5.2 billion by 1995. Wireless LANs are available to enterprises to connect their resources at 11 M bps and 52 M bps. Security is a major issue with this technology.

Metropolitan Area Network technology has been with us since the 1990s in some form. One such technology is FDDI. Some institutions and governments did set-up MANs using this technology. As ATM evolved, MANs were set-up using ATM and SONET technologies. In some cases optical fiber rings were set up to meet metropolitan area service needs.

In the last 5 years or so corporate needs have changed. Internet, Intranet and Extranet are meeting corporations' multi-media application needs. The new services and applications cannot be serviced by the legacy MANs. New MANs are developed to meet the IP services by using IP, ATM, SONET and DWDM. These MANs will provide connectivity to sites within Metro, access to the Internet or ISP and access to WAN services between Metro areas.

The objective of this module is to cover:

1.0   Ethernet and Token Ring technologies

2.0   Wide Area Networking (WAN)

3.0   Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

4.0   Wireless LAN technologies (802.11, 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11c)

5.0   Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)

6.0   Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) 

7.0   Gigabit LAN

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