Transmission (propagation) delay is strongly influenced by the physical distance a signal must travel and by the number of intermediate devices it passes through. As a rule, the smaller the geographic area a network covers, the shorter the propagation path and the lower the delay.

Among the given network types, a LAN (Local Area Network) has the lowest transmission delay because:

• It spans a small area — a room, building, or campus (up to a few kilometres) — so signals travel very short distances.
• It uses high-speed links (commonly 1 Gbps or more) with few intermediate hops, keeping latency down to the order of microseconds.

Ranking the options from lowest to highest delay:

The relative delays can be summarised as:

So the MAN covers a whole city and the WAN spans nations, both giving larger delays than a LAN, while a satellite network has the worst delay of all because a geostationary link forces the signal roughly 36,000 km up and back, adding about a quarter of a second each way. The LAN, with the shortest distances, is the clear answer.