When you connect a computer to your Ethernet LAN, do you know what you're plugging the Ethernet cable into?

This requires new kinds of circuit-switching gateways that feature LAN interfaces and telephony trunk connections to public networks and PBXs.

If you are writing an intranet application that works on a LAN within a single department or organization then other middleware technologies become attractive.

Bridges are connected to multiple LAN segments and learn which addresses are used on which segment.

A network switch is a small hardware device that joins multiple computers together within one local area network (LAN).