Parameter | LAN | MAN | WAN |
Area Covered | Covers small area i.e. within the buildings | Larger than LAN smaller than WAN | Covers large geographical areas |
Error rates | Lowest | Moderate | Highest |
Transmission speed | High | Moderate | High |
Equipment cost | Uses inexpensive equipments | Uses moderately expensive eqipments | Uses very expensive eqipments |
Standard | IEEE 802.3 | IEEE 802.6 | IEEE 802 |
Design and Maintenance | Easy | Moderate | Difficult |
Transmission Media | Co-axial Cable | Co-axial and Fiber optic cables | PSTN or Satellite links |
Uses | Used for time critical purpose. | Used for general purpose applications. | Used for non-time critical application. |
| IPv4 | IPv6 |
| Introduced in 1981. | Introduced in 1999. |
| They are 32 bit addresses. They are represented in decimals. | They are 128 bit addresses. They are represented in hexadecimals. |
| Decimal Notation Example: 192.168.10.1 | Hexadecimal Notation Example:2003:1CA7:0325:AB10:0321:7654:9810:DCAB |
| Header length is variable. | Header length is fixed. |
| In total, there could be about 4.29 billion addresses | In total, there could be about 3.4×10^38 addresses |
| Security features are optional. | Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is inbuilt feature of IPv6. |
| Checksum field and Options fields are present in IPv4 header | Checksum field and Options fields are absent in IPv6 Header |
| Both Sender and Forwarding Routers perform Fragmentation. | Only the Sender performs Fragmentation. |
| IPv4 addresses are mapped to MAC Addresses using Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) | Here, Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) is used instead of ARP. |
| Packet Flow Identification is absent. | Packet Flow Identification is present in the IPv6 header. |
| Configuration is done either in Manual (Static) or Dynamic (DHCP) mode. | Auto-Configuration of addresses are done. |
| Broadcast messages are present. | Broadcast messages are absent. |
USB 2.0 | USB 3.0 | |
1. | It was introduced on April 2000 | It was introduced November 2008 |
2. | It consisted of 4 wires within the cable. | It consisted of 9 wires within the cable. |
3. | It has a maximum signaling rate of 480 Mbit/s | It has a maximum signaling rate of 5 Gbit/s |
4. | Can either send or receive at one time (Half Duplex). | Can send and receive data simultaneously (Full Duplex). |
5. | Can draw up to 500mA power. | Can draw up to 900mA power with better power efficiency. |
6. | A single cable without extension could be only 5m long. | A single cable without extension could be only 3m long. |
7. | Referred as HighSpeed. | Referred as SuperSpeed. |
8. | Usually black or gray colored. | Usually blue colored. |








