A LAN connects devices within a limited area like a home, office, or building. It allows devices to share resources like printers and files. A MAN covers a larger area like multiple cities or towns and is more expensive than a LAN. A WAN spans multiple countries or continents and uses satellites. MAC addresses uniquely identify devices on a network and are assigned to network cards. They are 48-bit addresses represented as 12 hexadecimal digits.

1. Topics: LAN, MAN, WAN, MAC Address
SUBMITTED BY:
Md. Naimur Rahman
Id: 1915002521
Batch: 50th
Department of CSE
City University
LAN - Local Area Network
A Local Area Network (LAN) is a private network that connects computers and devices
within a limited area like a residence, an office, a building or a campus. On a small scale,
LANs are used to connect personal computers to printers. However, LANs can also
extend to a few kilometers when used by companies, where a large number of computers
share a variety of resources like hardware (e.g. printers, scanners, audiovisual devices
etc), software (e.g. application programs) and data.
MAN - Metropolitan Area Network
A Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is a larger network than LAN. It often covers multiple
cities or towns. It is quiet expensive and a single organization may not have own it.
WAN - Wide Area Network
A Wide Area Network (WAN) is a much larger network than LAN and MAN. It often covers
multiple contries or contenants. It is quiet expensive and a single organization may not
have own it. Satellite is used to manage WAN.

2. MAC Address
o MAC address is the physical address, which uniquely identifies each device on a given
network. To make communication between two networked devices, we need two
addresses: IP address and MAC address. It is assigned to the NIC (Network Interface
card) of each device that can be connected to the internet.
o It stands for Media Access Control, and also known as Physical address, hardware
address, or BIA (Burned In Address).
o It is globally unique; it means two devices cannot have the same MAC address. It is
represented in a hexadecimal format on each device, such as 00:0a:95:9d:67:16.
o It is 12-digit, and 48 bits long, out of which the first 24 bits are used for OUI(Organization
Unique Identifier), and 24 bits are for NIC/vendor-specific.
o It works on the data link layer of the OSI model.
o It is provided by the device's vendor at the time of manufacturing and embedded in its
NIC, which is ideally cannot be changed.
o The ARP protocol is used to associate a logical address with a physical or MAC address.