Wide area networks or WANs may not be in the everyday vocabulary of non-IT folks, but it is hard to imagine life in today’s digital-first world without the benefit of evolving WAN technology.
“WANs have become an essential part of human communication and business relations,” according to CompTia.
We work, socialize, shop, and play online and the internet, that crucial link that can connect nearly 8 billion people around the globe in a blink of an eye, is essentially the largest WAN in the world.
“If it weren’t for wide area networks (WAN) it wouldn’t be possible to telecommute, to create unified networks for organizations with far-flung locations, or to do anything online,” says Network World. “But WANs do exist, constantly evolving to carry more and more traffic faster as demands increase and technology becomes more powerful.”
WANs are what keeps business humming and data flowing as they can connect corporate headquarters, satellite offices, remote workers, cloud-based applications, vendors, and clients together as a seamless network.
Unlike a local area network (LAN) which requires connected devices to be in a limited area such as a single building or on a campus, WANs can facilitate fast and secure communication between remote stakeholders.
At its core, WANs are:
“A WAN is a computer network that uses various links – private lines, multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), virtual private networks (VPNs), wireless (cellular), the internet – to connect smaller campus and metropolitan area networks in diverse locations into a single, distributed network covering a large geographical area,” says Network World. “The sites could be a few miles apart or halfway around the globe. Enterprise uses of a wide area network include connecting regional and branch offices and individual remote workers with centralized resources.”
CompTIA says that the networks are often established by service providers that then lease their WAN to businesses, schools, governments, or the public.
“Employees from anywhere can use a business’s WAN to share data, communicate with coworkers or simply stay connected to the greater data resource center for that organization,” says CompTIA.
That critical data, once housed in a centralized location at headquarters or in a dedicated data center, can now often be found in the cloud.
WANs have come a long way from the early days of circuit-switched telephone lines and dial-up modems with “speeds” of 2400 bps to today’s 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps connectivity.
The first WAN – based on phone lines, telephones, and modems – was created by the U.S. Air Force in the late 1950s to connect its radar defense system.
Apcela describes the evolution of WANs:
The growth of businesses today, certainly the globalization of commerce, would not be possible without WANs.
“If WAN connections didn’t exist, organizations would be isolated to restricted areas or specific geographic regions. LANs would allow organizations to work within their building, but growth to outside areas — either different cities or even different countries — would not be possible because the associated infrastructure would be cost prohibitive for most organizations,” says CompTIA.
Some of the advantage of WANs:
“A wide area network (WAN) is your data’s highway across the digital landscape,” says Verizon. “It provides an avenue between your digital resources, such as hardware and software, and your users.”
Making use of a WAN allows a business to have resources in a centralized location, eliminating duplicate servers and expenses. Examples include:
The cloud-based and secure global SD-WAN, such as that offered by Cato Networks, adds other WAN advantages such as: