|  | 3.1 | WAN Communication
| 3.1.2 | LAN/WAN integration issues
Distributed applications need increasingly more bandwidth, and the explosion of Internet use is driving many LAN architectures to the limit. Voice communications have increased significantly, with more reliance being placed on centralized voice mail systems for verbal communications. The network is the critical tool for information flow. Networks are being required to cost less, yet support the emerging applications and larger number of users with increased performance. Until now, local- and wide-area communications have remained logically separate. In the LAN, bandwidth is free and connectivity is limited only by hardware and implementation costs. In the WAN, bandwidth is the overriding cost, and delay-sensitive traffic such as voice has remained separate from data. Internet applications such as voice and real-time video require better, more predictable LAN and WAN performance. These multimedia applications are fast becoming an essential part of the business productivity toolkit. As companies begin to consider implementing new intranet-based, bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications-such as video training, videoconferencing, and voice over IP, the impact of these applications on the existing networking infrastructure will become a serious concern. For example, if a company has relied on its corporate network for business-traffic and wants to integrate an video-training application, the network must be able to provide guaranteed QoS (quality of service). This QoS must deliver the multimedia traffic, but does not allow it to interfere with the business-critical traffic. Consequently, network designers need greater flexibility in solving multiple internetworking problems without creating multiple networks or writing off existing data communication investments.
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