Introduction
Wide Area Technologies, WAN, refer to connections made of devices in far different geographical areas. The network is commonly used by organizations having several branches distributed in a country or state. The connection helps the organization integrate its different operations and helps the branches communicate with each other (Ghanaatian et al., 2019). Also, WAN technologies incorporate point-to-point technologies and Packet-switched and circuit-switched networks. The listed WAN technologies have different data transmission technologies different from each other and with varied bandwidth requirements and limitations.
Point-to-Point WAN consists of several Local Area Networks, LANs used in an organization’s network. They are often connected to the main network source being used in an organization. The connection between LANs to make a WAN is a serial connection. An example is the use of telephone lines which telecommunication companies lease to the users. Another example is using a modem to access the internet as the two points are connected with Point-to-Point WAN (Biferale et al., 2019). Point-to-Point WAN transmits data through ethernet cables, where the most commonly used ethernet cable is the Synchronous Optical Network, SONET. The data transmission speed ranges from 10Mbps to 10Gbps and also depends on the area the network is set up, as some areas have obstructions that lower the transmission speed. From the transmission speed, Point-to-Point WAN have high bandwidth, enhancing quality connections. However, the bandwidth is limited to only transmitting small amounts of data.
Packet Switched WAN enhances the transmission of data in packets from one device to the other. The data packets have headers containing the address and source of the data and the payloads, which contain the transmitted data. The TCP protocol’s break protocol performs the data packets’ reassembling once the data has reached its destination. Email is an example of the day-to-day use of Packet-switched WAN technology. On sending email, the email is sent in fragments with the header stating the email address, the message and the attachment (Li et al., 2019). These fragments are reassembled upon reaching the receiver. Bandwidth in Packet-switched is in high demand because of the many users of email across the world. Hence, it faces much congestion because of simultaneous multiple users. The congestions make the use of the network unstable.
In-Circuit Switched WAN; each communication process creates its physical circuit, which is then terminated on completion of the process. The communication process maintains the circuit through the two nodes or devices involved in the communication process. Unlike Packet-switched WAN, circuit-switched WAN only enables the communication between two devices at each given time. Hence, this WAN’s bandwidth requirements depend on the devices in the communication process (Rajagopalan, 2020). However, bulky data causes delays in the network. In circuit-switched WAN, data is transmitted in either data-gram, where data is sent in singular forms or data-stream form, in which data is sent continuously. An example of a circuit-switched WAN is telephone companies providing services through Integrated Service Digital Networks. The data transmission rate in circuit-switched WAN is relatively higher compared to Packet switched WAN.
In conclusion, using WAN technologies has eased communication and connection between nodes far from each other. These work well unless an obstruction of the network slows down the connectivity speed and reliability of the connections made. The use of each technology also depends on the needs of the user or organizations, the number of nodes to be connected, and the amount of data to be shared.
References
Biferale, L., Bonaccorso, F., Buzzicotti, M., Clark Di Leoni, P., & Gustavsson, K. (2019). Zermelo’s problem: optimal point-to-point navigation in 2D turbulent flows using reinforcement learning. Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, 29(10), 103138.
Ghanaatian, R., Afisiadis, O., Cotting, M., & Burg, A. (2019, May). LoRa digital receiver analysis and implementation. In ICASSP 2019-2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) (pp. 1498-1502). IEEE.
Li, S. Y., Yang, X. Q., Chen, T., Wang, D., Wang, S. F., & Wan, L. J. (2019). Tri-Stable Structural Switching in 2D Molecular Assembly at the Liquid/Solid Interface Triggered by External Electric Field. ACS nano, 13(6), 6751-6759.
Rajagopalan, S. (2020, November). An Overview of SD-WAN Load Balancing for WAN Connections. In 2020 4th International Conference on Electronics, Communication and Aerospace Technology (ICECA) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
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