The general types of networks should be familiar to most people, and so should their basic properties. For mobile phones and tablets, the types we will be using in our implementations are of the wireless variety, including WiFi (WLAN) and those available outside of the WiFi range; which includes 2G, 3G, and most recently 4G (LTE). These are also referred to as WAN.
WLAN stands for Wireless Local Access Network. This, as the term implies, means a local (wireless) network. WLAN's coverage is usually 100 meters or less for a single access point. WAN is an acronym for Wide Area Network, and it is used for technologies that cover a larger area. In the case of wireless WANs, this means a range measured in kilometers, as in the case of 3G and similar technologies, such as 4G, 2G.
As far as technical properties are concerned, WLAN is generally the fastest, lowest-latency connection, with the latency on a not-heavily-used network usually being less than a millisecond, which is similar...