LAN

As larger universities and research labs obtained more computers during the late 1960s, there was increasing pressure to provide high-speed interconnections. A report in 1970 from the Lawrence radiation laboratory detailing the growth of their "Octopus" network, gives a good indication of the situation. A local area network is a computer network covering a small physical area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school, or an airport. The defining characteristics of LANs, in contrast to wide area network include their usually higher data-transfer rates, smaller geographic place, and lack of a need for leased telecommunication lines. The development and proliferation of CP/M-based personal computers from the late 1970s and then DOS-based personal computers from 1981 meant that a single site began to have dozens or even hundreds of computers. The initial attraction of networking these was generally to share disk space and laser printers, which were both very expensive at the time. There was much enthusiasm for the concept and for several years, from about 1983 onward, computer industry pundits would regularly declare the coming year to be “the year of the LAN”.