Are all LANs media-sharing LANs? Why would you say so?

Answer 1

Depends on what you mean by Media-Sharing. A Local Area Network (LAN) is simply a method of "physically" connecting two or more devices together in order to share information or utilize resources not physically connected to ones computer.

For example: A printer can be a device on a LAN. It may not be connected to any computer but it is connected to the LAN by a cable. The printer "advertises", meaning that it tells all other devices on the LAN what it's capabilities are. In this example, Media-Sharing is simply a computer sending a print job to the printer. The print job is the media and it's sharing it with the printer so it can print it.

A more direct example can be shown by looking at just two computers on a LAN. They would be connected via a network device, a hub or switch, that allows the two PC's to communicate with one another - or, in some instances, the two may be directly connected together without a hub or swtich using what's called a cross over cable. The whole purpose of connecting these two together is to share information, whether that be music files, cd's or documents.

So, the only real purpose of connecting PC's on a LAN is to share information. Depending on what you mean by media, all LAN's are media-sharing LAN's. I'm not going to complicate the question by adding security and resource sharing to the mix but at its basic definition, all LAN's are for sharing something.

Hope this answers your question.

Answer 2

All LANs are capable of sharing media, its just data. Not all are used for that purpose.