WAN Full Form

Introduction

What is the full form of WAN? WAN stands for Wide Area Network. It is a type of network that exists globally and can be connected throughout devices across the world. This network can facilitate communication between any part of the world, where the location should be under the network coverage. The internet is now recognized as the world’s biggest wide-area network for connectivity with people. Such similar WANs can be very much helpful to communities, businesses, the public, and organizations.

A WAN is a form of telecommunication that can be accessed through any location across the world. This allows them to be said as the largest computer or system network available today.

These kinds of networks are provided by service providers, which simply can be called the sim provider such as Idea, Jio, or Airtel. That lease their network to the general public, government, or businesses for their use and take money for usage. Unless the customers are outside of the network set by the service provider they can send or receive a message from anywhere to everywhere. Here each device is provided with an IP address that is recognised as an Identity in the network and is recorded for every transaction of data and with the help of which a service provider locates the device.

Need for a WAN 

The discovery of LAN and MAN connections allowed the transfer of data within a particular range. And when they came to market, they revolutionised the data transfer mechanism. And were used by many businesses and people. However, they had their limitation of range. To share a particular data people have to be in a particular range to other systems. And due to which people from far places can not transfer data with each other. This problem was seen by many intelligent minds which created the means to increase this data transfer range from LAN and MAN to WAN.

It is due to a Wide Area Network today we can send our message to the whole world with only a button click effort. And be connected to every person outside our area.

Working of a Wide Area Network

WANs are divided into two types, the first is a point-to-point connection and the second is operating by transfer of data packets.

A Point-to-point connection is a connection with the help of telephone lines. Let us understand it differently. When we use a dial-up connection or a router in our home. The router is connected with a telephone network which is also called a private line. The data is received by the router and is transported through the telephone lines. These lines are controlled by Telephone companies or overseas carriers.

And in packet transmission. The data is initially converted in the form of small packets and those packets are received by a nearby network antenna and are sent to the hub via satellite. Similarly, it is transferred from hub to hub until it reaches the recipient hub and from which it is again transferred to the recipient’s nearest antenna and sent to the device where the packets are assembled and shown in the display or whatever device is being used.

Future of WAN

As the technology is developing the WAN devices and the way we use Wide Area Network is also advancing. One common example of an Advancement of Wide Area Network is the introduction of Star link Satellite by SpaceX. Star link enables access to the internet all over the globe where the point-to-point network or any other network is not reachable. It operates by directly communicating with the help of satellites.

The working of star link is as the satellites are placed in low earth orbits that communicate with ground-based transceivers and have direct communication between them. The data is transmitted from the transceiver to the satellite nearest and is transferred to the recipient’s nearest satellite from where it is again sent to his/her transceiver. However, the implementation of this technology is limited due to government approval pending and other circumstances. A similar kind of technology is also being developed by Meta, a newer version of Facebook.

Conclusion

To sum up, WAN stands for Wide Area Network. After the creation of LAN and WAN where there came a need to connect people globally, WAN was constructed which could connect people across the globe wirelessly. Current WAN works in two ways, either by a point-to-point connection or by sharing data wirelessly using packets and satellites. As the demand for technology and the need for faster internet speed with less latency is increasing, companies like SpaceX and other companies are solving the problems by creating services like Star Link. That could connect people in remote areas and provide higher-speed data transfer with very little latency. This could even enhance a lot in near future and we may use star link or any other service.