MAN

networking

Metropolitan area network: a network across a city, larger than one site and smaller than a carrier's long-haul.

It is the least used of the three terms and describes a real situation: a university, a hospital group or a municipality with several buildings across a city, joined by fibre they either own or lease dark. What makes it its own category is that the economics sit between the other two - the link is not free, and it is not metered per byte either, so the design choices belong to neither.

Also known as: metropolitan area network

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