Explain WANS to me.

[tehx]

When someone says they are connecting to businesses together in a WAN does that just basically mean they are connecting them to the internet so they can access each others' files. Because the internet is basically a WAN right? 

[Guest]

Yes, the internet is basically wan. 

[tehx]

1 minute ago, Some Random Member said:

Yes, the internet is basically wan. 

So what are other wans apart from the internet?

[Lurick]

While WAN can refer to the internet, and in a lot of cases does, there are different types of WAN connections.

T1, T3, DSL, Frame Relay, Cable, etc.

All those types plus more, such as Ethernet, can be used for WAN as well and you might have a WAN connection from a branch to a main office via an MPLS or other connection and all traffic goes to the main office before going out to the internet.

 

There is also stuff like SD-WAN, iWAN, etc. which are software defined WANs that allow for more granular control of applications, performance, etc.

[tehx]

Just now, Lurick said:

While WAN can refer to the internet, and in a lot of cases does, there are different types of WAN connections.

T1, T3, DSL, Frame Relay, Cable, etc.

All those types plus more, such as Ethernet, can be used for WAN as well and you might have a WAN connection from a branch to a main office via MPLS WAN connection and all traffic goes to the main office before going out to the internet.

it might be easier if I show you what im looking at:

I do not know what it means by wan in this context

[Lurick]

Just now, Assassinguy2623 said:

it might be easier if I show you what im looking at:

I do not know what it means by wan in this context

 

WAN in that case is just referring to the connection of multiple locations together although it's pretty poorly written since technically that's the only way to connect "Academy" to other locations.

 

They probably mean "why would you want to connect "Academy" to other schools" in which case you have many different examples, sharing of resources (eg: files) between locations, communication and collaboration between students, video streaming, etc.

[tehx]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

 

WAN in that case is just referring to the connection of multiple locations together although it's pretty poorly written since technically that's the only way to connect "Academy" to other locations.

 

They probably mean "why would you want to connect "Academy" to other schools" in which case you have many different examples, sharing of resources (eg: files) between locations, communication and collaboration between students, video streaming, etc.

Ok thats what I thought. And they are basically connecting these academy's together through the internet?

[brwainer]

1 minute ago, Assassinguy2623 said:

it might be easier if I show you what im looking at:

I do not know what it means by wan in this context

In a context like this, "Wide Area Network" is being used as a general term for a network that is larger then the local one, but doesn't necessarily mean the internet (which is the widest possible network). People say that WAN means internet because when you are talking about a single simple router/gateway/etc that just has a WAN side and a LAN side, the WAN side is normally the ISP connection to the internet. When you start getting into more complex networks, WAN can have a more nuanced meaning.

 

For two schools connecting to each other, they will normally use dark fiber, MPLS, Metro-E, or other physical connections between them, or they may just decide to create a permanent tunnel (like a VPN connection) that uses their normal internet connections but provides a way for them to route traffic "directly" to each other. The combined network of the two shared through such a link can be considered a WAN, because people at both schools can access resources of both as if they were a single LAN (the reason why this wouldn't actually be a single LAN is that you would never do this at L2 but always at L3)