wide area networking for the small and mid-sized business

Wide Area Network (WAN)::

A wide area network (WAN) is two or more LANs connected together utilizing carrier services such as PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), Frame Relay, ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) or other high speed service. WAN networks can span the distance between buildings, cities and even countries.

A business with multiple locations can share resources between locations and utilizing voice over IP (VOIP) may even save thousands of dollars on inter-company phone calls.

Broadband connections bring an even more affordable way for small businesses to implement a wide area network. Through the use of the internet and a site-to-site VPN a small business can build a secure tunnel between two locations. The tunnel contains all the information necessary for gateway A to negotiate a secure and encrypted communication stream with gateway B. The gateways contain this information so that it does not have to be loaded onto every computer connected to the gateways.