Good Essay On The Future Of Networking: The Wide Area Network

The future of Networking: The Wide Area Network

Unlike the Local Area Network (LAN) and the Metropolitan Area Networks, (MAN), the Wide Area Networks or the WANs are no prisoners to any local limits or boundaries. The WANs can stretch across the very large geographical area including states, countries, provinces or even the entire world. The most common example of a WAN that we come across today is the internet. The interesting part, however, is that even within the internet; there are plentiful smaller WANs one example of which is the extranets. The WANs often utilize tools and equipment that take up greater expense in comparison to all the equipment that is required by a Local Area Network.
The wide area networks hold a number of benefits over the local area networks the most major of which is that this type of network links users on a very large scale and the miracles of the internet is a very common example before our eyes. Businesses can not only maintain communication with their partners but can extend their horizons to clients, customers, shareholders and suppliers. There is, however, one point where the Wide area networks lack in comparison to its contemporaries, and that is the speed of data transmission. The speed at which a user can transfer data to another user is much slow in comparison to the speed of transmission of LANs, which transmit data at remarkable speed.
The WAN again scores points because of its ability to provide remote access. People who communicate on computers in their offices can also access the same system by making the use of the internet which offers flexibility and allows them to make changes and work from countless different locations. Also, since the person connecting to the Wan does not hold ownership of the equipment that is employed in establishing the connection, getting connected to a wide area network does not involve as much cost as in case of LAN. In case of LAN, the person has to incur costs on all the equipment that is required to link the different servers to one another.
The Wide Area Networks have been immense support in our lives especially starting from the recent few years. Today, people are placing more load on the internet than ever before because of various user needs like the cloud computing, the social media and the sharing of heavy files inclusive of videos and pictures. The problem is that all of these uses have put a strain on the internet that it was not equipped to handle and is therefore at the immense threat of becoming obsolete. This complexity, however, has been putting IT experts under enormous pressure to struggle to design bigger WANs that can bear up the greater pressure. For these few reasons, we are looking at a time when the WAN is once again about to undergo vigorous change and the WAN that we might be looking at a few years from now is bandwidth that is going to come to us at a lower cost per bit, and the speed at which the files would be retrieved and delivered is going to increase manifold. All of these changed are going to come to us through a process that we call WAN optimization. And let’s not forget the countless newer and more innovative applications that these improved networks will be able to support.
The Wan or the internet of tomorrow is therefore going to become a more robust tool which is going to support the video and pictures sharing need of today and it might even be good enough to offer greater usage at lower costs than we might be expecting today. It is the tool that many of the future businessmen are going to rely upon to carry forth their daily transactions and provide them with access to instantaneous communication, as well as uncountable business tools. We have been witnessing quite a few innovations as of late in the world of networking technologies and they would surely be able better to suit our future needs and are very likely to undergo improvement and innovation over the course of the next few years. These technologies involve innovations like Ethernets and Hybrid cloud networks. The Ethernet is basically a local area network which is spread over a larger area to adapt it to perform all the advantages offered by the wide area networks plus that of local area networks too. Hybrid cloud, on the other hand, is a combination of the networks which are local as well as wide. An organization that uses the hybrid cloud employs some of the services in-house while other services are acquired by public clouds.
All of the signs above tell us how the Wide Area Networks of the future are no longer going to be just wide area networks. They are being adapted to derive the benefits of the local area networks and also to retain the advantages that the WANs offer. This is so that the speed and cost problems could be made better to suit the most current of our needs.

References

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