Now, let us begin to an interesting lecture on a wide area network now, when most of the people are
asked to define the wide area network, some of them might say it's a network covering a large geographical
area, which is correct.
And the rest of the people just come up with a quick answer.
That is the Internet.
Well, the right wide area network spans a larger geographical area as compared to the local area network.
With that in mind, you can imagine that wide area networks are what we use to span a great larger geographic
areas like two countries, five countries or even the entire world.
Like the Internet ones usually employ both routers and public links.
So that's generally the criteria that is used to define them.
Now, let us have a look at some important ways that wide area networks are different from local area
networks.
Now, vans usually need a router, boat or boats, with that in mind, we are going to see our routers
and ports in our upcoming next video sections.
Then wide area networks span larger geographic areas and they can link to disparate locations, wide
area networks are usually slower than local area networks, and we can choose when and how long we can
connect to a while.
Then we can utilize either private or public transport in white area network mechanism, for example,
phone lines.
Now, we all know that we get the wall Internet from the Internet and in the network is a type of plan
that is a local area network or it is a type of wide area network that connects a bunch of networks
or intranets.
We all know that when we connect to multiple local area networks, it forms of wide area network and
then into network hosts still use hardware addresses.
That is the Mac addresses to communicate with other hosts on the local area network.
However, they use logical addresses that is IP addresses to communicate with hosts on different local
area networks.
Routers are the devices that make this possible.
Now each connection into a router is a different logical network.
As you can see on the screen.
Router one of Branch one and router two of Branch two is connected to the Internet and therefore the
host.
That is the box that can access information from the servers in this way, one that is a wide area network
is utilized by everyone.
The Internet is a prime example of what's known as a distributed wide area network.
So what is a distributor wide area network?
It is an Internet work that's made up of a lot of interconnected computers located in a lot of different
places.
Switching on to the next concept that is multi protocol label switching now and business will be clearly
defined in Section 60 and you don't have to worry about that.
But for this section, I'm just giving you a brief introduction of what is mean by multiple Tocal label
switching.
Now, it is not a service provider by any of the devices or any of the layers, but it is a technique
that is used to forward data to different multiple destinations.
Now, what is exactly in place now?
I would like to read the technical definition and then I would explain in simple words, using a real
life example.
So the definition goes like this and peerlessly the switching mechanism that imposes labels to the data
and then uses these labels to forward the data when it arrives at the network.
Now, what does that mean?
Don't worry.
Consider this example.
You're ordering a stuff from Amazon and from the center.
From the data center.
From the service center.
They have sent that packaged box.
They want to deliver that box to your house.
So what do they do?
Do they just give you a name?
No, they give an address.
They give an idea, a bar code or a QR code, so that whenever the packet reaches different destinations,
for example, you are you have ordered something from California and you want and you are located in
Boston.
So from California to Boston, you want your package delivered.
So the package will arrive at multiple locations in between.
It may arrive at Texas and South Carolina, then New York and then Boston.
So at this point, they scan the QR code and then they calculate the next top or the next destination.
In similar way, whenever a data is to be transferred through a network, the labels are imposed on
that data packet and then accordingly that data is transferred.
So this is all about multi protocol label switching in this section.
I just wanted to give you a small introduction of the topic button Section 16.
We learn more about multi protocol label switching.
Now, in the next lecture, we are going to talk about peer to peer and client server architecture.
You might have heard these words frequently used by I.T. professionals, but in the next lecture, I
will give you a brief introduction and I will also explain the characteristics of both types of network
architectures.