1.4

1.4

1. LAN-local area network. Computers are connected together over a small geographical area such as a single building or a single site. Examples: home network, school network, network in a shop.

2. WAN-wide area network. computers are connected over a large geographical area. this could be several buildings/sites, town wide, county wide or even country wide. the biggest WAN could be a global collection of networks.

3. LAN has its own infrastructure of cabling and network hardware due to distance and practicalities. WAN uses external hardware and external infrastructure e.g use of satellite, phone lines or the internet.

4. client server, there are two ways of setting up a network to share data and services. the client server all network relies on a central server. all clients [devices] request services from the server.

5. peer peer server, all computers have equal status. each device can act as a client and a server. all devices can request and provide network services. no additional hardware/software needed to set up this type of network.

6. all files can be stored centrally on a client server, workers can access files from any other computer, all computers can update central databases however on peer-peer all files are stored on their own computers, users have to log in to the same computer every time.

7. backups are easily managed on a client-server as these can be done centrally from the file server, all data is backed up in one GP, individual computers do not need to be backed up. with peer-peer all computers are responsible for backing up their own files.

8. centralised security on client-server - antivirus and firewall can be installed and configured from a central location. peer-peer - individual security may need to be installed on individual machines.