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Digital Literacy How the Internet Works The Internet Routers and Switches

Posted by Emma Stidham
Emma Stidham
1,068 Points

What does LAN stand for?

I'm confused and the video was really fast. How should I remember this?

Evan Koike
Evan Koike
23,691 Points

LAN stands for Local Area Network.

2 Answers

Paul Willis
Paul Willis
4,082 Points
Paul Willis
Paul Willis
4,082 Points

LAN stands for Local Area Network

A X
A X
12,842 Points
A X
A X
12,842 Points

As many of have said, it's Local Area Network...but what exactly does that mean?!? What's determined to be local is typically a single house or building. However, there's other similar phrases for different types of Internet networks: PAN (Personal Area Network), CAN (Campus Area Network), MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) & WAN (Wide Area Network). All three just mean basically how far away from each other the parts of the network are: PAN is the closest because it's a network that exists on your person, like by using a phone or a tablet, LAN is next largest after that as it's probably just your home or your office building, CAN can be larger or smaller depending on the size of the school/work campus, MAN is in the middle in terms of size, and WAN can be the largest of the bunch.