Chapter Summary
Local-area networks (LANs) are confined to small geographic areas, such as your home or office building. Wide-area networks (WANs) span broad geographic areas, such sections of a country or continents. WANs interconnect LANs and create what appears to users as a single network.
Information sent across media is called a signal and is in electronic (analog or digital), optical (light), or radio (wireless or cellular) form. Analog signals are measured as continuous waves with a certain frequency, whereas digital signals are measured as square waves with discrete values: 1 or 0. Optical signals are light pulses and are also measured as square waves with the same values as digital signals. Radio signals are measured like analog signals, ...
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