Difference between WAN and LAN ports (2024)

LAN and WAN are two acronyms that you are likely to come across when you are trying to carry out any kind of computer networking. LAN stands for Local Area Network and WAN is Wide Area Network.

LAN

Local Area Network refers to a computer network that covers small to medium areas like homes and small offices. A LAN within your home or small business can include a variety of devices including a router, desktop computer, laptop, printer and game console. Every device in your LAN has to feature an IP address to establish communication with other devices within your local network and across internet. LANs usually work for data sharing and support for printers and other peripheral devices.

WAN

WAN stands for Wide Area Network. As the name suggests, this is a network that covers a wide area, such as a city, a region or a state. A WAN is a network outside of the Local Area Network or LAN and in the majority of cases (although not always), it refers to internet. It is possible to set up a small WAN using many LANs. When using a LAN, you will notice that the devices within that network have IP addresses that share the same format.

Why does a router have two IP addresses?

A router has two IP addresses because there are two kinds of IP addresses: public and private. The IP addresses that we previously mentioned for devices within a LAN network (192.168.1.x) are private. The easiest way to understand the difference between public and private IP addresses is to think of the public IP as the phone number of a company, where the private IP addresses are the internal telephone line extensions.

Public IP addresses are set for public access and are visible to other users on internet. A website is hosted on a server associated to a public IP address. On the other hand, a private IP address is only used within your Local Area Network and no one can access it from outside your LAN.

Where do I find the WAN and LAN ports?

If you take a look at your wireless router, you may see the abbreviations LAN and WAN, which are often next to some of the ports on the device. These two ports can be easily found in the back of the routers.

A LAN port is also known as an Ethernet port, network connection and network port. A LAN port allows a computer to get connected with the network by using a wired connection. A LAN port is implemented by using the RJ-45 Ethernet socket on a computer or a network device. In a local network, all the client machines, server machines and network devices are joined together by a LAN port.

A WAN port is used to establish a connection with an external network like the internet. For a small scale network like home or small business, a WAN port is implemented by using a RJ-45 Ethernet port. This port is present on a router and is wired to a cable or DSL model. In some cases, this port may be referred as “Internet.” A WAN port is wired to an external network, therefore it receives information from the external network. The information gets filtered by the router’s internal firewall and routing system. After the filtration, the information is sent across to the LAN port or sent over a wireless connection. On any router, the WAN port is always kept apart from the LAN ports. In order to differentiate the two types of port, the WAN port is usually differently coloured.

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