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When would you implement a MAN network instead of a WAN network?
I'm on the city council for a smaller town in Georgia. We're looking into the costs of providing a basic wifi network to our downtown area. I've been reading up about different types of networks, and am wondering how big a network needs to be before you decide to implement a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) instead of a Wide Area Network (WAN). We really only would need to cover an area that is the size of 6 city blocks. That area includes our main strip with restaurants, shopping, and a small park.
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5 Answers
A small muni would never build a WMAN, (A MAN used to mean putting fiber in the ground which would be the job of a tier 1 carrier or a public utility). For municipal WiFi or WiMax, the costs of antennas and wireless access points would be vastly lower than the phone company would spend to build Clearwire type carrier grade WiMax network. According to a conversation I had with Meraki some months ago, you should estimate $10K for every square mile with good saturation. There are some case studies on their site.
WMAN (Wireless Metropolitan Area Network) typically defines much larger sites (range of 20+ miles). I think WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) would probably define your project better.
A local area network is a network that spans a relatively small space and provides services to a small number of people.
A wide area network is a network where a wide variety of resources are deployed across a large domestic area or internationally. An example of this is a multinational business that uses a WAN to interconnect their offices in different countries.
http://teethidpro.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_area_network - So a MAN interconnects LANs to WANs - you are building a small WMAN.
But think speeds and costs here.
The cost of a fast LAN is low, but a Fast WAN is a very high cost.
The trade-off will be the interconnects between the downtown users vs the need to connect outside this group - internet and head/remote offices.
I'd imagine a wireless ring for sure, but with a few WAN pop connects to aggregate traffic to the rest of the world. Some buildings may yet be better served with wired cable connections to avoid contention and improve security.
MANs and WANs are typically differentiated by distance, yet used interchangeably, causing much confusion.
Your issue with a 6 block WiFi network does not require knowing the difference between a WAN, MAN, or LAN. It appears you simply want to offer a service to your community so a wireless device can access the Internet. This can be done with numerous technologies at varying price points.
Before considering hardware, there are several other decisions in the project's critical path; too many to list. Ask your city ISP for suggestions, maybe they would even support the hardware for a small fee.
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