From the course: Networking Foundations: Wide Area Networks (WANs)

What is WAN?

From the course: Networking Foundations: Wide Area Networks (WANs)

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What is WAN?

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- [Instructor] The wide area network or WAN refers to a network that covers a large geographic area, which may even span even across countries or continents. The internet that we know, or the worldwide web is a good example of WAN. Within a WAN, we can have many other networks that are connected to each other. Think of it as a network of many other networks. Say you've got a network in the US, which is then connected to a network in Australia and Northern Singapore and the UK. That's WAN. That means with WAN, we can access network devices or servers that are remotely connected, even on the other side of the globe. Imagine that! To ensure that remote networks will be able to communicate properly with each other, we have the WAN Standards. The following are the authorities that define the WAN access standards. We've got the TIA or the Telecommunications Industry Association, EIA or the Electronic Industries Alliance, ISO or the International Organization for Standardization, and the IEEE or the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The WAN standards describe both the physical and data link requirements for a WAN connection that covers the layers one and two of the OSI Model. At layer one or the physical layer, we got the media type and the interface specifications. Meanwhile, at layer two or the datalink layer is where we got the various WAN protocols. Wondering about the various WAN protocols? Don't worry, we'll cover them separately in the succeeding videos. The first known wide area network was created in the late 1950s by the US Air Force. It was used to interconnect sites in the Sage Radar Defense System, connecting a huge number of dedicated phone lines, telephones, and modems. In today's time, we use WAN to interconnect sites and companies across different parts of the world. We also use WAN for remote connectivity, much like when we work from home or when we attend teleconferences in different countries at different time zones. When we search the internet, the servers hosting the websites that we visit could also be in a far off place. That is also WAN in action. As you may see with WAN or the Wide Area Network, we are able to connect multiple networks together. Otherwise, the local networks will be isolated from each other. But how can we connect a network to another network? What could it look like? That is called WAN Topology, and we'll cover that next.

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