Local Area Network (Lan) Basic Components

The local area network (LAN) is home to sheer bandwidth and countless client server applications. Different companies have radically different networks; some have a single PC and others have hundreds of locations and thousands of computers. This page is intended to explain the basic principles and components frequently found on the LAN. The internal network is usually built with the highest bandwidth available. It is then connected to a tiny internet connection which is almost always a bottle neck for internet traffic. Most businesses of any size have at least one server to provide extra computing features to the business. The internet is explicitly distrusted and generally the network has protection from the internet built in. The LAN is something that businesses have complete control over. Network devices are much simpler than servers and PCs. It is common (and best practice) to duplicate significant portions of the Network to allow for failure without having a noticeable impact on the network. A LAN is the local cabling and set of network devices at an individual location building or campus but the internal network can easily include many LANs connected to form a WAN.

The internal network, and therefore the LAN, exists to link all of the PCs, laptops, servers, printers, and anything else that might be useful for a computer to talk to. Most LANs have a cable running from every computer to a wall jack. The wall jack is connected to a very similar type of cable that runs to a patch panel in a wiring closet. A patch panel is simply a bank of cable ports that allows all of the cables coming from each wall jack to be connected to the LAN if desired. Any active wall jack must have the corresponding port in the patch panel connected to a switch in the wiring closet. A wiring closet is a centralized room where these cables end. It is common for there to be many wiring closets in a building. The standard is that these wiring closets not actually be used for anything