Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JGO]

A BT VDSL modem is said to be connected to a router by a "WAN"

Usually WAN means Wide Area Network, which is hardly true  for a home user with a single connection a metre or so long, so is it a protocol like USB, Ethernet or RS232C ?
 
A bit of browsing seems to indicate that this is also known as  EWAN.  OK but is the name of a Welshman Ewan  who invented it, or E-WAN ?  It is implied by the special Ethernet socket on some ADSL routers that the protocol is a variant of  Ethernet yes ?

Having seen several queries posted as a result of this confusion, suggest some clarification would be welcome.  Anyone ?

[loonylion]

WAN means wide area network as you said. The router port labelled WAN means just that, the WAN side of the router. EWAN is ethernet WAN.

[JGO]

Loonylion, thanks for the confirmation.   Is there a specification or is it a de-facto standard ?

 I'm tempted to recall the time when,  to a GPO engineer, "Induction coil" = "Microphone Transformer " !  I bet it made explaining a car ignition problem complicated.
 
Seriously it would be nice to all speak the same language ; some things need explaining very carefully even then. l!!

Again many thanks for the clarification
 
 

[kitz]

The WAN is the opposite side of the LAN. 

The Local Area Network is anything on the internal side of the router - so this could be your home or office network.   
WAN is anything that goes elsewhere away from the LAN - ie the "other side".   The Internet is one huge WAN.

A very simple explanation of the hardware involved which may help understanding.

A router consists of 2 network cards...  one which controls the LAN traffic and one for the WAN.   The routers job is to control which traffic goes from the LAN to the WAN and vice-versa.  Most home routers will use NAT to ensure that traffic coming from the WAN side goes to the correct PC on the LAN.

[JGO]

Kitz, thank you for your expanded explanation - all very logical when you start from the appropriate place.  With Loonylion's posting it confirmes what I had assumed but assumptions when the starting point isn't absolutly firm can go astray.

Thanks again

 

[kitz]

nps, glad it helped.


As regards to EWAN : -
It just means that rather than say that rather than an RJ11 type socket we may be used to seeing on traditional adsl routers for the WAN side.. it has an ethernet port thats attached to WAN side network card.   Some modem routers may have both ethernet and RJ11 WAN ports, so just think of EWAN referring to the type of socket/port for the type of cable that attaches to it.   

and to confuse further...  some routers with an internal modem have the ability to make the EWAN port into a '5th LAN port' if youre using the RJ11 port to plug into your phone socket.