Building Area Network

What Does Building Area Network Mean?

A building area network (BAN) is a local area network (LAN) that covers an entire building. It may be a collection of smaller local area networks. For example, if each floor is considered a single LAN, then the combination of each per floor LAN is considered a BAN.

Techopedia Explains Building Area Network

Although BAN is not an official networking term, it indicates that an entire building is connected as a single network. In technology or networking topology terms, a BAN is a LAN configuration applied to an entire building, much like a LAN applied to a household is known as a home area network (HAN), or if a few neighbors are connected, a neighborhood area network (NAN) – none of which are official terms.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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