Personal Area Network (PAN):
Mobile phone, MP3 player, Personal Digital Assistant, Digital Camera, the list of gadgets that we might carry with us grows and grows, but do they connect to each other? The idea of a Personal Area Network (PAN) is to create a very small network, one that goes with you, enabling the devices that you carry to communicate with each other and with devices that you come close to. The Bluetooth standard is one solution to this idea, allowing gadgets within a range of around 10 metres to talk to one another.

Medium:
There are a wide variety of ways to connect computers together. Wires, such as co-axial cable (like the type used to carry the terrestrial TV signal from the rooftop aerial to the television) and twisted pair (similar to telephone wires) are used. Optical fibre, made from glass and capable of very fast connection speeds is also used. But it doesn’t stop there, wireless links are also possible, from satellite links to send information around the world, to using radio waves to create a wireless Local, or even Personal, Area Network.