What distance does local area network cover?

Answer 1

You have been asked to design the entire cabling system for a medical instrument manufacturer's new central warehouse. The company already has three buildings within two city blocks, and the warehouse will be its fourth building. Currently, the buildings run on separate networks, but the company would like to be able to exchange data among them. For example, the Quality Control Department in building 1 would like to be able to access servers in the Research Department in building 2. In addition, the Sales Department in building 3 wants to conduct video training sessions for its representatives

in the field via the internet. Next door, in the warehouse, 50 shipping and packing personnel in the Fulfillment Department will be riding up and down the aisles on forklifts pulling inventory off the shelves on a daily basis.

What kind of transmission media would you recommend for each different building

and department of the medical instrument company and why?

What type of media would you recommend using to connect the buildings and why?

Finally, what kind of media should the company request from its ISP for connecting

the corporate WAN to the Internet?

Answer 2

It depends...

1. Technology - WiFi ranges are commonly some "tens of metres" to small hundreds, Ethernet can be built over tens of metres to hundreds of metres using copper cable to hundreds of metres using fibre optics.

2. Terminology - a LAN is commonly a single building or a small number of buildings. A large collection of buildings such as a College/university/factory complex is often named as a "Campus Area Network", a "CAN".