MCA Articles - Page 176 of 102

A wide area network (WAN) is a computer network that covers a large geographical area comprising a region, a country, a continent or even the whole world. WAN includes the technologies to transmit data, image, audio and video information over long distances and among different LANs and MANs.The distinguishing features of WAN areWANs have a large capacity, connecting a large number of computers over a large area, and are inherently scalable.They facilitate the sharing of regional resources.They provide uplinks for connecting LANs and MANs to the Internet.Communication links are provided by public carriers like telephone networks, network providers, cable systems, ... Read More

A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a network with a size greater than LAN but smaller than a WAN. It normally comprises networked interconnections within a city that also offers a connection to the Internet.The distinguishing features of MAN areNetwork size generally ranges from 5 to 50 km. It may be as small as a group of buildings in a campus to as large as covering the whole city.Data rates are moderate to high.In general, a MAN is either owned by a user group or by a network provider who sells service to users, rather than a single organization as ... Read More

A Local Area Network (LAN) is a private network that connects computers and devices within a limited area like a residence, an office, a building or a campus. On a small scale, LANs are used to connect personal computers to printers. However, LANs can also extend to a few kilometers when used by companies, where a large number of computers share a variety of resources like hardware (e.g. printers, scanners, audiovisual devices etc), software (e.g. application programs) and data.The distinguishing features of LAN areNetwork size is limited to a small geographical area, presently to a few kilometers.Data transfer rate is ... Read More

The function time.time() returns the time in seconds since the epoch, i.e., the point where the time starts.For Unix, the epoch is January 1, 1970. For Windows, the epoch is January 1, 1601.time.time() is used for benchmarking on Windows. time.time() behaves the same on both UNIX and Windows but time.clock() has different meanings.On UNIX, time.clock returns the current processor time expressed in seconds, i.e., the CPU time it takes to execute the current thread so far. While on Windows, it returns the wall-clock time expressed in seconds elapsed since the first call to this function, based on the Win32 function ... Read More