Page 26 - Cyber Safety C-6

HOW DEVICES CONNECT: NETWORKS

Imagine you want to play a video game with your

friend who lives across town. You can't just shout
to them, right? You need a way to connect. That's
exactly what a network is.

A network is like a digital team. It's a group of two
or more devices (like computers, tablets, phones
or game consoles) that are connected to share
information and resources.

Types of Networks

There are many different types of networks around us. Let us understand the most common ones:

Personal Area Network (PAN)

A Personal Area Network (PAN) is the smallest type
of network, covering a very small area, like a room
or even just around you. It connects devices that
are near you, such as wireless headphones syncing
with your phone, a smartwatch connecting to your

phone or transferring photos from your phone to your
laptop using a cable. PANs usually use Bluetooth or
USB connections for these tasks.

Local Area Network (LAN)

A Local Area Network (LAN) connects devices
within a small area, like a home, school or office. It
links devices such as computers, tablets and printers,
allowing them to share resources. For example, your
home Wi-Fi network connects to your devices or

computers in a school lab link to a central server.
LANs offer fast speeds and usually use Wi-Fi or
Ethernet cables.

Wide Area Network (WAN)

A Wide Area Network (WAN) is the largest type of network and can cover huge areas, such as
different cities, countries or even the whole world. The best example of a WAN is the Internet,
which connects computers across the globe. Other examples include networks that link offices
of a company in different countries or airline reservation systems in many cities. WANs cover
the biggest areas but are usually slower than LANs or MANs and use technologies like fibre optic
cables and satellites.

24 Computer Science - VI