A wide area network (WAN) is a network that covers a large geographical area located within a countryside and worldwide networks such as city,country,

or the world

• Areas of coverage : WANs is a large geographical area located within a countryside and worldwide networks such as city,country or the world
• Ownership     : WANs have no ownership

• Enterprise Private Network (EPN) is a type of network built by an enterprise to interconnect various company sites ,e.g production sites and shops

   in order to share computer resources

• Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a type of private network built over public infrastructure

• Messages can be sent very quickly to anyone else on the network
• Sharing of data or information is private and confidential
• These are similar to those LAN's except the scale of sharing etc.becomes far greater and can be world-wide

• Again these are similar to those of LAN's except that issues such as security become even more important as potential hackers could break 

into a computer system from anywhere on the world rather than having to physically be in a building

• Encryption of secure data such as financial transactions is necessary because it is even easier to capture data