CAN: A campus area network (CAN) is a network of multiple interconnected local area networks (LAN) in a limited geographical area. A CAN is smaller than a wide area network (WAN) or metropolitan area network (MAN). A CAN is also known as a corporate area network (CAN).
Small office/home office (SOHO): Short for small office/home office, a term that refers to the small or home office environment and the business culture that surrounds it. A SOHO is often thought of as being the smallest of small businesses. It is a privately owned and operated business or individuals who are self-employed. SOHO is often characterized as being a small in both the size of the office space and number of employees.
Cloud, Wide Area Network(WAN): Cloud networking (and Cloud based networking) is a term describing the access of networking resources from a centralized third-party provider using Wide Area Networking (WAN) or Internet-based access technologies. In cloud networking, the network can be shared as well as the computing resources.
Cloud networking is related the concept of cloud computing, in which centralized computing resources are shared for customers or clients. In cloud networking, the network can be shared as well as the computing resources. It has spurred a trend of pushing more network management functions into the cloud, so that fewer customer devices are needed to manage the network.
Data Center: Data centers are often served by communications networks that help aggregate data and allow them to flow through the system. This can be done in many ways, and some models have emerged for data center topology. For example, some follow a tree-based topology, including what is called a "three-tier data center" network with three layers: access, aggregate and core. A "fat tree" architecture is related to this general model.
Other data center topologies include systems where one server "hub" is connected to many other servers or where different servers are cross-linked or cross-indexed for various types of functionality. For example, a "leaf-spine" approach adds various components to a central "spine layer" serving networks with heavy directional traffic. Other topologies, like the BCube, are made for a modular or "shipping container" data center approach. A "flattened butterfly" approach operates on a more two-dimensional level than many of the "cube" topologies, for some energy savings.
