WAN....it's not the internet!! (sometimes) // FREE CCNA // EP 8

About this video

A CCNA lesson on WANs — how geographically separate sites connect, as distinct from LANs inside a site. The creator uses a coffee company with a corporate office, a data center, and branch coffee shops to explain why branches need centralized services such as phone systems, email, databases, websites, payroll, and point-of-sale servers. He covers older options first: leased lines (T1 at 1.54 megabits per second, T3 at around 43 megabits per second, and E1/E3 in Europe) with guaranteed performance but high cost, plus frame relay and ATM. He then explains MPLS as a carrier-provided private network using one connection per site, describing it as a layer 2.5 technology that uses label switching and virtual circuits to keep customer traffic separate, with CE (customer edge) and PE (provider edge) routers, and QoS to prioritize voice. Next is Metro Ethernet, typically connecting data center to corporate office or data center to data center at 1 gigabit or 10 gigabits per second, as E-Line (point-to-point), E-LAN (full mesh), or E-Tree (hub-and-spoke). He contrasts this with cheaper site-to-site VPNs over public internet, which encrypt traffic but can drop and lack QoS, and introduces SD-WAN as the emerging MPLS replacement that also optimizes connections to cloud services such as AWS and Azure. The video ends with two worked Boson practice questions.

Key takeaways

• LAN is inside a site; WAN connects separate sites such as branches to corporate or a data center
• Leased lines guarantee performance but are expensive; T1 is 1.54 Mbps and T3 is around 43 Mbps
• MPLS uses label switching and virtual circuits for a private carrier network with QoS, without relying on encryption
• Metro Ethernet is typically layer 2, fast, and used mainly between main sites as E-Line, E-LAN, or E-Tree
• Site-to-site VPNs over public internet are cheaper but less reliable; SD-WAN is presented as the MPLS successor

Episode details: published October 31, 2020 · 26:05 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

← Previous: Phishing attacks are SCARY easy to do!! (let me show you!) // FREE Security+ // EP 2 · Next: i hacked my grandma (social engineering and pretexting) // FREE Security+ // EP 3 →

All NetworkChuck videos · NetworkChuck profile · NetworkChuck on YouTube