3. LAN in the home

Many homes now have LANs where many devices other than workstations can connect together in order to share data. Here is an example of what a LAN within a home might look like:

The key device at the centre of a home LAN is the router which connects all of the devices to each other and where required, to the internet. This means that while sitting on your sofa using your laptop you could select your playlist from an internet streaming service and at the same time send a document that you have been working on to the printer.

The router can be either wired or wireless. A wired connection is faster and provides high bandwidth (e.g. Gigabit 1000 Mb/s) use whereas the wireless link is much slower (54Mb/s) but it does offer convenience.