What is wan? What is the Difference Between The Wan Connector and the Lan on the Router?

If you want to know what a WAN is, or the difference between a WAN and a LAN, then you have come to the right place. Now let’s try to understand what these technologies, connectors, connections, what they are for and what the differences are.

I think that in most cases, when someone is looking for information on WAN, he means the connector on the Wi-Fi router. After all, in almost every router configuration manual you can meet this abbreviation. Everyone writes about connecting some kind of cables into the WAN connectors, or LAN. Let’s go in order:

WAN (Wide Area Network) is a global computer network. Simply put, this is the Internet. If we talk about the WAN connector, it is a connector on the router, in which the cable from the provider is connected. Network cable, through which the router gets access to the Internet.

Almost all routers have a blue-colored connector, and it looks like this:

In the photo above you can see that the connector is even signed. Also, the router usually has an indicator of the connected WAN cable. In normal operation, it should be actively blinking. And near the indicator itself usually draw an icon in the form of a planet.

Now you know what WAN is. Let’s see how it differs from LAN.

What is the difference between a WAN connector and a LAN?

Here it is also very simple. What is a LAN?

ALAN (Local Area Network) is a local area network. Simply put, it is computers that are connected to each other over a short distance. For example, computers, televisions, mobile devices that are connected to each other through a router within a home, or office. This is what a local area network is.

On routers, you can usually find 4 LAN connectors. They are yellow in color and look like this:

They are used to connect devices to the LAN via a network cable.

The difference between WAN and LAN is that WAN is access to the Internet, and LAN is a local network, which can be connected to devices that are not far from each other.

I think that’s all you need to know about these two designations. Of course, we can go into technical aspects, abstruse definitions, etc., but it is unlikely to be of interest to anyone.