by Mitz for Tips4PC.com

You probably know that a Local Area Network, also called a LAN, isn’t the Internet yet is somehow related. But what is it exactly, and what can it do for you?

Local Area Network Versus The Internet

If you think about the word Internet, you may realize that it’s trying to tell you something. The computer scientists who designed the Internet in the 1970s wanted it to interconnect networks, so they called it the InterNet.

Each of the networks the Internet interconnects is a local area network. Before the Internet became popular, they were just called networks. But in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the Internet began to become a household item, people began to describe the Internet as The Network (sort of how many people today describe Wikipedia as just plain Wiki).

At the dawn of the Internet, everyone one on the Internet had a local area network. But that’s because in the 1970s, computers cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, so the only people with computers were the government, universities, and large businesses. It was inconceivable in those days that people would connect directly to the Internet.

That changed in the late 1980s when dial-up Internet service started. People could now call a local server connected to the Internet and receive direct access to the Internet. Soon it seemed like everyone was on the Internet and the idea of a local area network had faded away.

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This excerpt is shared with permission from tips4pc.com.

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