Networks by Size
🎬 Watch the 2:29 video of this chapter ↓Your earbuds, your school lab and the Internet are all networks. They are clearly not the same kind. One simple question sorts every network into a type: how big an area does it cover?
1Zoom out, one size at a time
Start with one person and keep pulling back. Each new size swallows the one before it.
Pick a size, or press Play to zoom all the way out.
2The four types
One person's devices — phone, earbuds, watch, laptop.
A room, a building or a campus, run by one school or office.
LANs joined across a town or city.
Networks joined across cities, states, countries and continents.
3Each one is built from the smaller ones
The types are not separate worlds. A MAN is made by joining LANs across a city. A WAN joins LANs and MANs across countries. And the Internet joins all of them. So when you send a photo to a friend in another country, it may start on your PAN, cross your home LAN, travel over a WAN, and arrive on your friend’s LAN.
4Check yourself
What is the main thing that decides whether a network is a PAN, LAN, MAN or WAN?
Which list goes from the smallest network to the largest?
Types of Networks, in 2:29
One animated video of the whole chapter, narrated. Watch it before the lessons for the big picture, or after them to revise.