Book excerpt: Local Area Networks (LANs) have become an integral part of communication in today's world. The establishments that use LAN applications include businesses, educational facilities, hospitals, stock exchanges and warehouses. This book offers reader-friendly, comprehensive coverage of LAN technologies, teaching the reader how to use them in real-world applications. The text is ideal for students both in the classroom and later as a reference. Forouzan motivates topics by practical applications, and his liberal use of figures makes difficult technical topics easier to grasp by providing an intuitive, visual representation of concepts. Extensive practice sets are also provided at the end of each chapter, which reinforce what the student has learned The book is also up-to-date, presenting indepth material on such current topics as Gigabit Ethernet, ATM LAN, Wireless LAN, VPN and VLAN.