WAN solutions have been around for many years, helping many businesses in this modern life. Everyone is using remote networks to make their work easy and convenient. WAN solutions let businesses communicate different geographic boundaries quickly. The geographical boundaries here are:
- cities
- states
- countries
The internet contains interconnected WANs that span worldwide. The enterprise wide area network allows businesses to exchange information over long distances safely. It is important to learn why WAN is needed and how it works as an enterprise WAN solution for any business remotely.
What is WAN?
WAN is a collection of local-area networks or LANs that communicate with one another. Indeed, it is a network or networks, in which everyone is communicating online. The different types of WANs that an enterprise may need are built for various usages in different situations online.
WAN benefits
WAN provides direct communication between satellite offices or multiple geographically diverse locations. Unlike LAN, WAN bridges distances and is an exceptional communication method for the right businesses. If the WAN is the same as the internet, why not directly send communications that way? WANs provide traffic for a business and are more secure than the internet.
Sending info across the internet means you need to share bandwidth with millions of businesses rather than dedicated bandwidth using WAN. Greater security and network consistency are the two reasons enterprises use WANs.
WAN router
A WAN router is an edge router, which routes data packets of various WAN locations. It gives an enterprise permit to the carrier network. Different WAN protocols have evolved over time, including:
- Packet over SONET/SDH (PoS)
- Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
- ATM
- Frame Relay
Types of WAN
- Packet switching. Packet switching is a data transmission method in which a message is broken into various parts called packets. Packets are sent independently. Each packet contained a piece part called a payload. Packets are sent tripled to check for packet corruption.
Each packet is verified in the process that confirms and compares that at least 2 copies match. When verification fails, the request is made for the packet to be resent.
- TCP/IP protocol suite. This is a protocol suite of foundational communication protocols used to interconnect network devices on the Internet and other computer networks.
- Router. The router is a network device used for interconnecting LANs to form WAN and is referred to as a WAN device. The UP routers are using IP addresses to specify where to deliver packets. An IP address is the numeral label for each connected network device.
- Overlay network. The overlay network is a data communications technique, in which software is used to develop virtual networks on another network, a hardware and cabling infrastructure. It is done to support security capabilities and applications unavailable on the underlying networks.
- PoS. It is a communication protocol for WAN transport. It will define how point-to-point links communicate using SONET and optical fiber or communication protocols.
Any of these can be used according to your enterprise’s needs. So, it is important to identify the right one for your business.
