What are networks?

Welcome! Before you can understand the importance of securing a network, you need to know what a network is.

A network is a group of connected devices. At home, the devices connected to your network might be your laptop, cell phones, and smart devices, like your refrigerator or air conditioner. In an office, devices like workstations, printers, and servers all connect to the network. The devices on a network can communicate with each other over network cables, or wireless connections. Networks in your home and office can communicate with networks in other locations, and the devices on them.

Devices need to find each other on a network to establish communications. These devices will use unique addresses, or identifiers, to locate each other. The addresses will ensure that communications happens with the right device. These are called the IP and MAC addresses.

Devices can communicate on two types of networks: a local area network, also known as a LAN, and a wide area network, also known as a WAN.

A local area network, or LAN, spans a small area like an office building, a school, or a home. For example, when a personal device like your cell phone or tablet connects to the WIFI in your house, they form a LAN. The LAN then connects to the internet.

A wide area network or WAN spans a large geographical area like a city, state, or country. You can think of the internet as one big WAN. An employee of a company in San Francisco can communicate and share resources with another employee in Dublin, Ireland over the WAN.

Now that you've learned about the structure and types of networks, meet me in an upcoming video to learn about the devices that connect to them.