Firstly, I'm a bit confused about this, but I wanted to ask anyway - so I'm sorry if what I ask sounds just plain stupid, because I don't know that much about this subject. I recently started my new (and firsT) job, I work in an office, currently training. The entire company has a private LAN in which the speed is something like 1.5mbps. I did a search for private dedicated servers, and I found linux servers for around £50 a month in which I can use to setup a private LAN with these kinds of extreme speed. To setup a private LAN would I need the server at my location, or would I connect to it. I do also want a server as a host, but I'm just asking about the LAN. Can someone just explain private LANs a bit to me, 'cause as I said - I'm confused, and I don't know much about them.. Thanks in advance.

do you mean "private lans" as in home networks?

I guess. Sorta. 'Cause Private LANs only cover a certain area right, and you can transfer files over the network extremely fast due to the short distance. But can't these kinds of LAN's also be used to get very fast download speeds from the rest of the Internet?

>> But can't these kinds of LAN's also be used to get very fast download speeds from the rest of the Internet? << No. The normal LAN speed is 100Mbps. The fastest Internet speed you are likely to get is 8Mbps and that is all you will get, regardless of what speed the LAN is capable of. You are only as fast as the weakest link in the chain and the weakest link is between you and your ISP. The 1.5 Mbps is not fast, unless you mean Bytes per second which is about normal for a heavily loaded LAN. Data transfere speeds are usually measured in bits per second. If you mean 1.5 Mega bits per second that that is very slow, even for a home network. Though a LAN may be capable of 100 Mbps, the is no absolute guarantee that you will get that speed. There are other factors to consider, not least of all in a coprate network is how many other people are using the network. I think Mr Bloom, you need to buy a book on networking and learn some of the basic principles. Paying £50 for a network service is silly unless you are running a very large company. A home network can be set up for less than £100 with no on-going costs except for your Internet connection which is nowhere near £50 a month. Stuart

Thanks for clearing it up for me - I thought I was being idiotic, just needed to be told. I'll just have to wait 'till November. That's when we get 8Mbit connections 'round my area. And yes the download speed at my work is 1.5 b/s. Thanks. Cookies taste good, so do HTML tags.

I think you mean 1.5 Mbps, which is most likely a T1, which is probably the office's connection to the internet. The private Ethernet LAN is probably 10 or 100 Mbps. There is a HUGE difference between 1.5 Mbps and 1.5 bps (bits per second) as you stated in your last post. Do some Google searches for the difference between data transfer rates and physical storage rates and sizing.