A local area network (LAN) is a computer network covering a small physical area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school,or an airport. The defining characteristics of LANs, in contrast to wide-area networks (WANs), include their usually higher data-transfer rates, smaller geographic range, and lack of a need for leased telecommunication lines.
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A local area network (LAN) is a computer network covering a small physical area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school,or an airport. The defining characteristics of LANs, in contrast to wide-area networks (WANs), include their usually higher data-transfer rates, smaller geographic range, and lack of a need for leased telecommunication lines.
Ethernet over unshielded twisted pair cabling, and Wi-Fi are the two most common technologies currently, but ARCNET, Token Ring and many others have been used in the past.
History
As larger universities and research labs obtained more computers during the late 1960s, there was increasing pressure to provide high-speed interconnections. A report in 1970 from the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory detailing the growth of their "Octopus" network, gives a good indication of the situation.
Early systems
Cambridge University's Cambridge Ring was started in 1974 but was never developed into a successful commercial product.
Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC in 1973–1975, and filed as . In 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Metcalfe and Boggs published their seminal paper - "Ethernet: Distributed Packet-Switching For Local Computer Networks"''
ARCNET was developed by Datapoint Corporation in 1976 and announced in 1977
The personal computer
In reality, the concept was marred by proliferation of incompatible physical layer and network protocol implementations, and confusion over how best to share resources. Typically, each vendor would have its own type of network card, cabling, protocol, and network operating system. A solution appeared with the advent of Novell NetWare which provided even-handed support for the 40 or so competing card/cable types, and a much more sophisticated operating system than most of its competitors. Netware dominated the personal computer LAN business from early after its introduction in 1983 until the mid 1990s when Microsoft introduced Windows NT Advanced Server and Windows for Workgroups.
The development and proliferation of CP/M-based personal computers from the late 1970s and then DOS-based personal computers a from 1981 meant that a single site began to have dozens or even hundreds of computers. The initial attraction of networking these was generally to share disk space and laser printers, which were both very expensive at the time. There was much enthusiasm for the concept and for several years, from about 1983 onward, computer industry pundits would regularly declare the coming year to be “the year of the LAN”.
Of the competitors to NetWare, only Banyan Vines had comparable technical strengths, but Banyan never gained a secure base. Microsoft and 3Com worked together to create a simple network operating system which formed the base of 3Com's 3+Share, Microsoft's LAN Manager and IBM's LAN Server. None of these were particularly successful.
