Local Area Network(lan):

Computer Networks are classified into the following:

The Local Area Network(LAN) is a network that is designed to operate over a small physical area such as an office, factory, or a group of buildings.
LANs are very widely used in a variety of applications. LANs are very easy to design
and troubleshoot.
The personal computers and workstations in the offices are interconnected via LAN.
The exchange of information and sharing of resources becomes easy because of LAN.
In LAN all the machines are connected to a single cable.
Different types of topologies such as Bus, Ring, Star, Tree, etc. are used for LANs.
LAN uses a layered architecture and they are capable of operating at hundreds of Mbits/sec.
A Local Area Network is usually privately owned and links the devices in a single office, building, or campus of up to a few kilometers.
A LAN can be small or large, ranging from a home network with one user to an enterprise network with thousands of users and devices in an office or school.

Depending on the needs of an organization and the type of topology used, a LAN can be as simple as a few computers and a printer at home or it can contain many computers in a company and include voice, sound and video peripherals.
LANs are widely used to allow resources to be shared between personal computers or workstations.
The resources to be shared can be hardware like a printer or software or data.
In a LAN one of the computers can become a server serving all the remaining computers called clients.
Software can be stored on the server and it can be used by the remaining clients.
LANs are also distinguished from MANs and WANs based on the transmission
In general, a given LAN will use only one type of transmission medium.
The data rates for LAN can now range from 10Mbps to 16Gbps.
The group of computers and devices are connected together by a switch or stack of switches, using a private addressing scheme as defined by the TCP/IP protocol.
Data transmits at a very fast rate as the number of computers linked is limited.
A communication medium used for LAN has twisted-pair cabels and coaxial cables.
It covers a short distance, and so the error and noise are minimized.

High reliability. Failure of individual computers does not affect the entire LAN.
It is possible to add a new computer easily.
The transmission of data is at a very high rate.
Sharing of peripheral devices such as printer is possible.