Local Area Network (LAN)

The Rest of the World

The university network connects to the outside world via special telephone lines known as data lines (or T1, T3, FDDI, or microwave links). The following two maps show the U.S. portion of the Internet, a worldwide hierarchy of interconnected networks.

The first map shows Westnet, which is just one of the more than 7,500 regional networks that make up the Internet (the one of which the University of Arizona is a part).

The second map shows NSFNet, which is a high-speed network into which other networks (such as Westnet) connect. Westnet connects to NSFNet through multiple gateways, one of which is located at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. Another gateway is in Salt Lake City at the University of Utah.

Westnet is described in detail at the Internet site:

http://www.westnet.net

The NSFNet is vast. When this brochure was compiled, several reasonable representations illustrating it were found on the Internet through the many different Search Engines.

Additional information on the Internet is available at:

http://www.internic.net