A computer network is a collection of computers and their hardware components interconnected to each other electronically. Each computer can share resources, information and send or receive data with other computers in the same network. The speed of connection is faster than a normal connection to the Internet. There are various types of networks based on the medium used to transport the data, scale, communications protocol used, topology and organizational scope. There are different ways to connect to a computer network. Some of them are below:
Personal area network
It’s a personal computer network that is used to communicate among computers and devices that are close to a person. Computer, scanner, fax machine are some of the examples. It could be wired or wireless.
Local area network
It’s a network that is used to connect computer and devices in a particular local area. The network connection at home, library are examples of LAN.
Home network
It’s a residential local area network used to communicate between home digital devices and personal computer, such as scanners, printers and mobile computing devices. An internet can be shared through a cable TV or Digital Subscriber Line provider.
Campus network
It’s a computer network within an area built by interconnection of local area networks. It is usually owned by college/university. The networking equipments and transmission media are all owned by the specific college/university. The network is linked to various computers within the campus territory.
Metropolitan area network
It is a network that covers vast amount of computers in a specific geographical area. The large computer network can be connected to a city, or a country.
Wide area network
It’s a broad computer network that covers a large geographical area. It can cover an entire country; communicate long distances, or even intercontinental distances.
The devices can be interconnected with devices in wide distance in this network.
Enterprise private network
It’s a network usually built by a company/enterprise to interconnect various company sites for its purposes.
It is usually private network interconnected with different devices of the same company.
Internetwork
It’s a network built by connecting multiple computer network using routers.
The numbers of routers are used to built a multiple computer network.