What are the differences in data transfer rates between typical LANs, WANs and mobile networks?
A typical LAN runs at 100mbps although the price of gig ethernet is quickly coming down and is becoming more common, this as the name suggests allows around 1000mbps. A WAN is effectively 2 or more LANs connected together using the phone network, therefore the transfer rates depend how much someone wants to spend – it could be 2meg or up to 10Gb, the speed is almost unlimited – the only restraint is how deep your pockets are. As for mobile networks, since the introduction of 3G which gave you around 384kb/s there has been an improvement known as HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) which boosted the speed to 1.8mbps, then 3.6mbps and now up to 7.2mbps is possible in some areas. Hope this helps, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give me a shout.
