Question 1

What is a personal area network?

Accepted Answer

A personal area network (PAN) provides networking needs around an individual. An example of a PAN is where a smartphone, smartwatch, tablet, and laptop all connect and share data without the need to connect to an access point or other third-party network services. PAN networks typically use Bluetooth to communicate because it provides a low-power, short-range data-sharing capability. The network standards associated with a PAN are Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15.

Question 2

What is a local area network?

Accepted Answer

A local area network (LAN) provides networking needs around a single location. This location might be an organization's office, a school, a university, a hospital, an airport, and many others. A LAN is usually privately owned and needs authentication and authorization to access. Of the different classifications of a network, a LAN is by far the most commonly used.

Question 3

What is a metropolitan area network?

Accepted Answer

A metropolitan area network (MAN) provides networking capabilities between two different locations within a city or metropolitan area to provide a single extensive network. Typically, a MAN requires a dedicated and secure connection between each LAN joined to the MAN.

Question 4

What is a wide area network?

Accepted Answer

A wide area network (WAN) provides networking capabilities between two different geographical locations locally or worldwide. For example, a WAN is used to connect an organization's head office with branch offices all over the country. A WAN links multiple LANs together to create one super network. As a WAN, you use a virtual private network (VPN) to manage the connection between different LANs.

Question 5

What is Ethernet?

Accepted Answer

Ethernet is a networking standard that's synonymous with wire-based LAN networks and also used in MAN and WAN networks. Ethernet has replaced other wired LAN technologies like ARCNET and Token Ring and is an industry standard.

While Ethernet is associated with wired networks, keep in mind that it's not limited to wire, since it's used over fiber-optic links as well.

The Ethernet standard defines a framework for data transmission, error handling, and performance thresholds. It describes the rules for configuring an Ethernet network and how each element in the network interacts with each other.

Ethernet is used in the OSI model at the data link and physical layers. It formed the basis for the IEEE 802.3 Standard. This standard helped to unify network and hardware development.

Ethernet is a continually evolving standard, and the original version supported a data transmission rate of only 2.94 Mbps. In recent years, several iterations have been released to keep up with the demands for increased speed. Today, rates extend up to 400 Gbps.

Question 6

What is Fast Ethernet?

Accepted Answer

Fast Ethernet (IEEE 802.3u) was developed to support data transmission speeds of up to 100 Mbps. Faster Ethernet is also referred to as the 100BASE-TX standard.

Question 7

What is Gigabit Ethernet?

Accepted Answer

Gigabit Ethernet (IEEE 802.3ab) was developed to support faster communication networks that can support services like streaming multimedia and Voice over IP (VoIP). The 1000BASE-T standard runs 10 times faster than the 100BASE-TX standard. Gigabit Ethernet is now included in the 802.3 standards and recommended for enterprise networks. The new standard is backward compatible with the 100BASE-T and the older 10BASE-T standards.

Question 8

What is 10 Gigabit Ethernet?

Accepted Answer

The 10 Gigabit Ethernet (IEEE 802.3ae) standard has a nominal data transfer speed of 10 Gbps, which is 10 times faster than its predecessor. This speed improvement is made possible only by using fiber optics. The standard now requires that 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks use area-based routing rather than broadcasting data to all nodes. In that way, network noise and traffic are reduced.

Question 9

What is Terabit Ethernet?

Accepted Answer

Terabit Ethernet offers data transfer speeds of 200 Gbps and 400 Gbps. It's expected that Terabit Ethernet will offer speeds of 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps in the future.