These are common-place in offices and are used to link 2 or more computers for the purpose of sharing files and/or peripherals.

A LAN refers to a network that spans a relatively small geographical area and/or is limited to one segment, for example an office floor-space.

LANs provide high speed data transfer (100Mbps to 1Gbps) between directly connected machines using different network topologies and protocols. See also Ethernet and WAN.

WLAN refers to a Wireless LAN which uses radio waves instead of cables for data transfer, this type of LAN is extremely useful but can be expensive depending on the amount of terminals involved.

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