MAN Computer Full Form

What is the full form of the MAN in a Computer?

The full form of MAN in a computer is a Metropolitan Area Network. A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a large computer network that covers a city or large geographic area. MANs can be used to connect different organizations such as businesses and government agencies or to provide Internet access for residents of a city or region. A MAN can be a single network, such as a cable television network, or it typically connects several local area networks, called LANs (Local Area Network), using high-capacity backbone technology, such as fiber optic links, and provides up-link services to a wide area network, called a WAN (Wide-Area Network). MAN operates at 1.5 Mbps to 10 Mbps and ranges from five miles to several hundred miles in length.

History of MAN

By 1999, local area networks (LANs) were well established for providing data communications in buildings and offices. Businesses mainly rely on the public switched telephone network to connect LANs in the city. But while the telephone network was able to support packet data exchange carried out by various LAN protocols, the bandwidth of the telephone network was greatly stretched by switched voice and telephone exchanges. Phone cannot solve this problem. with traffic spikes often generated by local area networks.

In order to connect local networks more effectively, it was proposed that office buildings be connected using single-mode optical lines, which were widely used in long-distance telephone lines at the time. Such dark fibers have in some cases already been installed at customer premises, and telephone companies have begun to offer their dark fibers as part of their subscription packages. Fiber optic metro networks are operated by telephone companies as a private network for their customers and are not necessarily fully integrated with the public wide area network (WAN) through gateways.

In addition to large corporations connecting their offices throughout urban areas, universities and research institutes have also used dark fiber cables as the backbone of urban networks.

How are MAN Networks Constructed?

Similar to a WAN, a MAN consists of interconnected LANs. Because data does not have to travel long distances, MANs are usually more efficient than WANs. Instead of being managed by a single organization, MANs often combine networks of several different organizations. Most MANs connect LAN networks using optical lines. MAN often uses "black fiber" transmission fiber optic cables that were previously idle. An option is to lease these optical lines from private Internet Service Providers (ISPs). A city government can build and maintain a metropolitan fiber optic network before leasing dark fiber to private businesses in certain cases.

Characteristics of MAN

• It can transmit information from a set of buildings to an entire city over a distance of 5 to 50 kilometres.

• Transmission speeds in MAN range from average to high.

• The most commonly used medium in MAN, optical fibers, enables high-speed communication.

• MAN networks have a very low error rate, making them highly reliable.

Advantages of MAN

In terms of area network coverage, MAN surpasses LAN and is in the middle of LAN and WAN. Let's discuss the advantages of MAN in more detail. The advantages are as follows:

• It provides fast communication over fiber optic and other high speed communication media.
• It provides increased WAN accessibility and strong support for large networks.
• Data transmission in both directions can take place simultaneously thanks to the dual bus of the MAN network.
• MAN networks typically include entire cities or specific neighborhoods.

Disadvantages of MAN

MAN even has some disadvantages in spite of its great benefits. Some of them are as follows:

• The construction of the MAN is quite complicated, which is why it is difficult to maintain.

• Setting up MAN is extremely expensive.

• Provides less fault tolerance.

• The data transfer speed is relatively low with MAN.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a Metropolitan Area Network is suitable when the communication area is larger to be handled by a local area network and smaller than needed for Wide Area Network transmission. This type of area network can also be connected to other area networks when needed, making it more scalable than other types of networks.