What Is a WAN? Wide-Area Network
What does Wide Area Network (WAN) mean? A wide area network (WAN) is a network that exists over a large-scale geographical area. A WAN connects different smaller networks, including local area networks (LANs) and metro area networks (MANs). This ensures that computers and users in one location can communicate with computers and users in other locations. WAN implementation can be done either with the help of the public transmission system or a private network.
In its simplest form, a wide-area network (WAN) is a collection of local-area networks (LANs) or other networks that communicate with one another. A WAN is essentially a network of networks, with the Internet the world’s largest WAN.
Today, there are several types of WANs, built for a variety of use cases that touch virtually every aspect of modern life.
How did wide-area networking start?
- The first known WAN was created by the U.S. Air Force in the late 1950s to interconnect sites in the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) radar defense system. An enormous network of dedicated phone lines, telephones, and modems linked the sites together.
- The foundation of the IP-based Internet started with the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the first wide-area packet-switching network with distributed control and the first network to implement TCP/IP protocol suite.
- ARPANET initially interconnected the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and the University of Utah.
What is a WAN router?
- A WAN router, also known as an edge router or border router is a device that routes data packets between WAN locations, giving an enterprise access to a carrier network. Several WAN protocols have been developed over time, including Packet over SONET/SDH (PoS), Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), ATM, and Frame Relay.
What is software-defined WAN (SD-WAN)?
- Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) is an approach for making WAN architectures easier to deploy, operate, and manage. It relies on virtualization, application-level policies and overlay networks, and onsite SD-WAN devices and software platforms.
- SD-WAN increases data-transfer efficiencies across a WAN by moving traffic to lower-cost network links to do the work of more-expensive leased or MPLS lines.
What is WAN optimization?
- Latency and bandwidth constraints often cause performance issues in enterprise WANs. WAN optimization use a variety of techniques, including deduplication, compression, protocol optimization, traffic shaping, and local caching. These techniques improve packet delivery and traffic control, in turn allowing network bandwidth to grow or shrink dynamically as needed.
- SD-WAN technology and WAN optimization can be used separately or together. Some SD-WAN vendors are adding WAN optimization features to their products.
What does WAN do？
When you send personal emails, videos, images, or text, the data files are generally simple and small enough to edit, save and share electronically. But things can get complicated when the connections that move this information multiply to accommodate more employees, office locations, and cloud- or server-based applications.
WANs are controlled-access telecommunications systems that are designed to efficiently transmit larger amounts of data, enabling network connectivity to a wide area. That area might be geographical, as with field offices, high-capacity in terms of processing power and users, or both.
How does WAN work?
WANs can use different types of connectivity and technologies to bridge their various parts. WAN operators often employ virtual private networks (VPNs) to interconnect locations and devices more securely. A virtual private network is important because data handled by IP-based WANs may become vulnerable as it moves across the internet.
As businesses grow, many are faced with aging network infrastructure and convoluted architectures resulting from technologies that were added over the years. To boost productivity and profitability, they may need WANs that use both wired and wireless technologies. Yet implementing both may seem impossible given available budgets and limited technology resources. And businesses may put off potentially game-changing advancements because they are fearful of the risks and costs to their network.
Hybrid, wired and wireless networks can lead to delayed or flawed security updates and implementation of business-critical applications. Think of the work involved in retrofitting equipment, alone. Settings must be changed for routers and servers. Phones, laptops, and tablets may need new setups. They may even need to be replaced.
Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technology may be the answer to these challenges.
Types of WAN technologies
Packet switching
Packet switching is a method of data transmission in which a message is broken into several parts, called packets, that are sent independently, in triplicate, over whatever route is optimum for each packet and reassembled at the destination. Each packet contains a piece part, called the payload, and an identifying header that includes destination and reassembly information. The packets are sent in triplicate to check for packet corruption. Every packet is verified in a process that compares and confirms that at least two copies match. When verification fails, a request is made for the packet to be re-sent.
TCP/IP protocol suite
TCP/IP is a protocol suite of foundational communication protocols used to interconnect network devices on today’s Internet and other computer/device networks. TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.
Router
A router is a networking device typically used to interconnect LANs to form a wide area network (WAN) and as such is referred to as a WAN device. IP routers use IP addresses to determine where to forward packets. An IP address is a numeric label assigned to each connected network device.
Overlay network
An overlay network is a data communications technique in which software is used to create virtual networks on top of another network, typically a hardware and cabling infrastructure. This is often done to support applications or security capabilities not available on the underlying network.
Packet over SONET/SDH (PoS)
Packet over SONET is a communication protocol used primarily for WAN transport. It defines how point-to-point links communicate when using optical fiber and SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) or SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) communication protocols.
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
MPLS is a network routing-optimization technique. It directs data from one node to the next using short path labels rather than long network addresses, to avoid time-consuming table lookups.
ATM
ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is a switching technique common in early data networks, which has been largely superseded by IP-based technologies. ATM uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing to encode data into small, fixed-sized cells. By contrast, today’s IP-based Ethernet technology uses variable packet sizes for data.
Frame Relay
Frame Relay is a technology for transmitting data between LANs or endpoints of a WAN. It specifies the physical and data-link layers of digital telecommunications channels using a packet switching methodology.
Frame Relay packages data in frames and sends it through a shared Frame Relay network. Each frame contains all necessary information for routing it to its destination. Frame Relay’s original purpose was to transport data across telecom carriers’ ISDN infrastructure, but it’s used today in many other networking contexts.
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You may also want to know the answers to these questions:
A wide area network (also known as WAN), is a large network of information that is not tied to a single location. WANs can facilitate communication, the sharing of information, and much more between devices from around the world through a WAN provider.
A Company network with several branch offices geographically distant. A school network is usually a LAN. LANs are often connected to WANs, for example, a school network could be connected to the Internet. WANs can be connected together using the Internet, leased lines, or satellite links.
Internet is the example of WAN.
LAN is a computer network that covers a small geographic area, like a home, office or group of buildings. WAN is a computer network that covers a broad area. For example, any network whose communications links cross-regional and metropolitan boundaries over a long distance.
Router. A router is a network device that connects together two or more networks. A common use of a router is to join a home or business network (LAN) to the Internet (WAN). The router will typically have the Internet cable plugged into it, as well as a cable, or cables to computers on the LAN.
A WAN port is used to connect to an internet source, such as a broadband modem. The WAN allows the router to connect to the internet and share that connection with all the Ethernet-ready devices connected to it.
WANs typically are used by corporations or organizations to facilitate the exchange of data between their computers in dispersed offices. Across all industries, most large corporations with facilities at multiple locations use WANs, and even small businesses with just two remote sites increasingly use WANs.
If you take a look at your wireless router, you may see the abbreviations LAN and WAN, which are often next to some of the ports on the device. LAN stands for local area network, and WAN stands for wide area network.
WANs offer a distinct privacy and security advantage. Network Performance Consistency: Equally important, your data does not have to compete with other Internet data for bandwidth as your communications travel between destinations. You get continuous access to all the bandwidth you are paying for.
WAN consists of different components that combine together to form a wide area network.
Routers, Switches, and Modems (Edge Device)
Connecting Media (Fiber, Wireless, Microwave or Satellite)
Customer Premises Equipment (CPE)
References
- Wide Area Network (WAN)
- What Is a WAN? Wide-Area Network
- What is a Wide Area Network (WAN)?
- Packet switching – Wikipedia
- Packet over SONET/SDH – Wikipedia
- SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) – Wikipedia
- Overlay network – Wikipedia
- Asynchronous transfer mode – Wikipedia
- Frame Relay – Wikipedia
 is a telecommunications network that extends over a large geographic area for the primary purpose of computer networking. Wide area networks are often established with leased telecommunication circuits.){kind=link}