Once you know a network is nodes connected by links, the next plain question is scale. How big is this thing? Network people answer with scope words: LAN, WAN, and a few cousins. The words are not fashion labels. They tell you roughly how far the links reach and who owns the space between them.
A LAN (local area network) is the network in one place you control: a classroom, a small office, one floor of a building. Ethernet and Wi-Fi live here. A WAN (wide area network) stretches across cities or continents. You usually rent the long haul from a carrier; the internet is the WAN most people mean. Between those poles sit useful middle sizes. A MAN covers a city or campus. A PAN is personal, phone to earbuds, a few meters of radio. A CAN is a controller network on a factory floor or in a vehicle.
Basically, start with distance and ownership, not the acronym. Is everyone under one roof with cables you can pull? That is LAN thinking. Are you crossing public infrastructure you do not own? That is WAN thinking. Day one of class deliberately refuses to chase LAN versus WAN before nodes and links are solid. The mesh lab builds the schema with hands. The labels come after the picture.
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