What is MAN?

The MAN or the Metropolitan Area Network is a kind of network interconnecting the users with the computer resources in the geographic area or region that is larger than the covered by a large local area network, yet smaller than the area covered by wide area network. The term is being applied to the interconnection of the networks into the city in a single larger network that offers efficient connection to the wide area network. It is even used as the interconnection of some local area networks by mainly associating them with the support lines. The end usage is also referred to as the campus networks.

Some examples the metropolitan area networks of different sizes could be originated in the urbanite areas of London, England, Geneva, Poland, Lodz and Switzerland. The large universities also use the terms in order to describe their networks. The recent trend is mainly the installation of wireless MAN. The working mechanism of the MAN is somewhat similar to the ISP or Internet Service Provider, yet a MAN isn’t owned single organization. Just like a WAN, a MAN mainly provides shared connections of the network to its users. Mostly, the MAN works on the layer of the data link, which is Layer 2 of the Open Systems interconnection model.