What is a LAN?
Definition
A LAN, or local area network, is a private network confined to a single site such as a home, an office, a hotel or one building on a campus. The organisation that runs it controls it end to end. A WLAN is the wireless variant, and a WAN connects several LANs together.
LAN explained
The LAN is your on-site network: the switches, cabling, access points and devices inside the building. Because you own and control every part of it, it is where you get the highest speeds and the most control over security, and where WiFi access happens. Traffic that leaves the building crosses onto the WAN, which usually relies on third-party carriers.
A modern venue LAN rarely carries one flat network. Guests, staff, point-of-sale terminals and IoT devices each get their own VLAN, a logical segment on the same physical switches, with firewall rules controlling what can talk to what. Without that segmentation, every device shares one broadcast domain, which is both a security and a performance risk.
Understanding where the LAN ends matters for design decisions. Authentication, DHCP and DNS can run locally on the LAN or in the cloud across the WAN. Cloud-managed WiFi moves management off-site while traffic stays local, so a guest’s video call does not have to travel to a data centre and back.
Need more than a definition?
Talk to our team about how Purple combines guest WiFi, captive portals, RADIUS, and analytics into a single platform that runs on the access points you already own.