Sunday, May 13, 2012
METROPOLITAN
AREA NETWORK
A MAN, or Metropolitan
Area network, is a network of computers spread over a ‘metropolitan’ area such
as a city and its suburbs.
Some technologies used for this purpose are ATM, FDDI, and SMDS. These
older technologies are in the process of being displaced by Ethernet-based
MANs (e.g. Metro Ethernet) in most areas. MAN links radio, or infra-red laser links.
DQDB,
Distributed Queue Dual Bus, is the Metropolitan Area Network standard for data
communication. It is specified in the IEEE
802.6 standard. Using DQDB, networks can be up to 30 miles long and
operate at speeds of 34 to 155 Mbit/s.
