B1 – Network Types Flashcards
B – Use of Networking Architectures and Principles for Security
Network Types
👉 A network is where two or more computers are linked together in order to transmit data. The most common example of this is the internet. But there are many other networks we use every day.
👉 Networks don’t need to be worldwide. They can be within a building, such as a school or a shop, or they could only cover your own personal space. Each has their own uses and individual features.
Network Types Examples
LANs, WLANs, SANs, WANs & PANs
Intranet, Extranet, Internet and Cloud
Wired and wireless integration
Local Area Network (LAN)
👉 A LAN refers to a network that spans a relatively small geographical area, usually a single building or site. LANs are most commonly used in a business.
👉 They’re particularly useful for sharing peripherals, such as printers, between multiple computers, storing files in a central location for file sharing, and central management of computers for installing software & backup.
Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)
👉 A WLAN is the same as above but uses wireless connections. This has the benefit of having no cables trailing around which can be a hazard and doesn’t require physical access points which limits connectivity.
👉 Being wireless this can reduce the range of the network as well as the speed. As we’ve looked at previous wireless connections are easier to launch attacks from too.
Storage Area Network (SAN)
👉 A SAN is another type of LAN. However, this is a specifically specialised high-speed network designed to provide block level access to data storage. This SAN is used only for storage and no other data transfer and is kept completely separate from the LAN.
👉 We use SAN when we have large, and especially ever expanding, data storage requirements. As our storage is separate to our LAN servers it is easy to expand storage capabilities.
Wide Area Network (WAN)
👉 A WAN is a network that spans a large geographical area, such as an entire country or the whole world, the internet is the most common example. However, businesses can have their own dedicated WAN, but it is VERY expensive.
👉 A WAN is used by businesses where they need to connect the LANs of their offices spread over different locations to share data.
Personal Area Network (PAN)
👉 A PAN is a network that is used to connect devices within the range of a single person. For example, you might connect your smartphone to your laptop, or a wearable device like a smartwatch.
👉 This is commonly used both for personal and business use. An example of this is where we might connect our laptop to our smartphone to access its mobile broadband connection.
Intranet
👉 An intranet is a network that uses common internet protocols, like TCP/IP. It gives your local area network (or potentially a private WAN) access to internet like services such as an internal email system or private websites
extranet
👉 An extranet is a private intranet that is accessible by selected external organisations (e.g. suppliers) or customers. Only a part of the intranet is made available, thus allowing you to share information with third-parties without providing access to the organisations entire network.
Internet
👉 The Internet is a worldwide network made up of interconnected smaller networks to allow for global communication. This is commonly used by businesses to access and share data outside of the local area network. For example, an employee may access the LAN from home using the internet. They may also use email and VoIP to communicate with suppliers or customers.
Cloud
👉 The Cloud is a buzzword that refers to storing data and performing processing on servers that are accessed through the internet rather than on a local storage device like a hard disk. This is increasingly used by organisations in place of local storage and computing as it is flexible to business needs and costs a low subscription fee to use.
Wireless Integration
👉 Integrating wireless connectivity into our network has many benefits. For starters, many modern computing devices don’t provide an ethernet port and rely entirely on wireless connections. Furthermore, it can allow visitors to our business to easily connect to our network to access resources, such as to share an internet connection with customers at a coffee shop.
👉 However, it does introduce some major vulnerabilities to the network. It will be much easier for a malicious user to connect to our network, and if the correct infrastructure, policies and tools are not put in place, then people that connect to our WLAN could cause serious harm.
