These definitions not guaranteed to be 100% accurrate.
The intention of this page is to enlighten you about the meanings of terms, or the general
applications of such terms. I will categorize terms into the following areas:
Assymetric Digital Subscriber
Line. Method of communicating with the internet. The rate of transfer is
higher incoming than outgoing. An ADSL line bypasses the phone company switchboard and
communicates directly with the ISP, therefore making communication faster.
Category 5 Patch Cable
Patch cable is the type of cable that is commonly used with RJ-45 type connections.
The category number is a rating of quality, one being a low rating, five being a high
rating.
DNS
Domain Name System. Internet server
computers are indentified by their domain names. A computer of one domain retains a list of
all other domain names and their corresponding network addresses. If a domain name is not
found within the local database, the server may query other domain servers.
Domain
...
HTTP
Hypertext Transfer
Protocol. Protocol used to access HTML documents
and other types of files over the internet.
IPX\SPX
Internet Packet
Exchange\Sequential Packet
Exchange. This protocol has been widely used in local area networks.
This protocol is not useable over the internet.
ISP
Internet Service Provider
Modem
Modulator-Demodulator
A modem is needed to bridge a computer to the telephone line because the method that information
is sent over a telephone line differs from how it is sent within a computer, or with devices
such as printers. A computer communicates digitally. A telephone line is analog. In analog
communications, a signal is imposed onto a carrier wave. The resulting value can be infinitely
many. In digital communications, a signal is only one of two possible values, hence binary.
The modem merges the digital signals with the analog wave; this is modulation. The modem
also takes digital signals out of the analog wave; this is demodulation.
Mbps
Megabitsper second. We usually
measure communication speeds in terms of bits because one bit is basically one cycle of
communication. A bit is a standard of measure.
MBps
Megabytesper second.
Communications can also be measure in this way. To think in terms of bytes can have more
meaning depending on what is being measured. The difference between measuring in bits or
bytes is similar to the difference between measuring time in minutes or hours. When
measuring the length of a song it is not very practial to say it is 4/60 or 1/15 or an hour.
Similarly, it is not usually practical to say it takes 240 minutes to drive across the state.
ODI
Open Data-Link Interface.
Specifications of Novell that provide a standard way of accessing networks.
Ping
Packet Internet Groper.
A command used to send a packet from one computer to another. The packet carries
instructions for it to be immediately returned. The packet has a time stamp so that
the time it took to complete the process can be determined.
PPP
Point-to-Point Protocol.
This is a protocol that is frequently with modems accessing the internet.
This protocol is used to exchange IP frames over a serial link. Your modem is serial since
a phone line has two wires for communication.
RJ-11
Name for Standard telephone connector.
RJ-45
Name for one type of ethernet connector. Is a type of plug for network adapters that
is frequently used with ethernet connections. Ethernet is capable of data transfer rates of up
to 10 Mbps.
SAP
Services Advertisement Protocol.
SLIP
Serial in Line Internet
Protocol. SLIP is a protocol that can be used for serial communications,
but is less common and less standardized than PPP.
T1
A T1 is a bundle of 24 64 kilobyte per second dedicated phone lines. The throughput
of a T1 is 1.544 Mbps (Megabits/Second). T1's are commonly leased from phone companies
to connect one internet service machine to another.
T2
Another type of communication device that can be leased from a telephone company.
The throughput is approximately 6.3 Mbps.
T3
Type of communication device. Throughput is approximately 45 Mbps. This cable is
fiber optic.
TCP\IP
Transmission Control
Protocol\Internet Protocol. These are
used to communicate over the internet. The TCP part of this protocol is used
to break down a large message or file into small managable pieces for travel and then
reassembling them once they have reached the destination. The IP part of the protocol
contains the addressing information for the packets. Consider that you wish to send a
book to a freind via no. 10 envelopes. You would have to tear it into 5 or 10 page sections,
place them into evelopes, address each envelope, and then leave instructions for how
to reassemble the book. This is similar to how TCP/IP works.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator.
This is a standard used to specify the path and location of files or
resources over a network such as the internet.
Binary Digit. Is a single character in a typical
string of eight. A bit can be position "1" or "0". Base two (binary) number system is
used in computers since a computer is capable of representing only two states.
Humans use base ten because we are able to represent ten states. (ten fingers)
Essentially, a computer has only two fingers.
BPS
Bits Per Second. Refers to the
transfer rate of data between devices.
Com Port
Used to communicate with an external device. There are at least two
main types, those being a serial ports and a parallel ports.
CPGA
Ceramic Pin Grid
Array. Refers to the pin configuration on the bottom of a processor.
DIP Switch
Dual Inline Package switch.
Is a small series of swithes in a line. DIP switches are often used to set such things as
processor frequency, voltage, and motherboard bus multipliers.
DMA
Is a Direct Memory Access
allocation for a computer component. A device is given a specific address in memory in
which it is free to store whatever information it needs. If two components share a DMA,
then one may overwrite the other's information resulting in a hardware conflict.
(Actually a resource conflict)
(.28) DP
Dot Pitch. Refers to the density of pixels on a
monitor screen. The .28 means that each pixel is spaced .28 millimeters from another.
DPI
Dots Per Inch. Refers to print
quality of characters printed by a printer. A higher DPI means a higher quality and
resolution.
EDO
Extended Data Ouput.
A type of ram chip.
EISA
Extended ISA (see below). Bus interface similar to
ISA but uses a 32 bit data path and the plug has two layers of pins rather than only one.
An E-ISA card will not plug into an ISA slot.
FPU
Floating Point Unit. The part of
the processor that is used to calculate non-integer numbers.
IRQ
Is an Interrupt Request which is an
allocation of time during a processor's clock cycle in which the processor is able to "take
the request" of a component. Consider the cpu as a worker bee that is very busy and only
opens himself for requests at 16 distinct moments. Availible IRQ's range from 0-15.
ISA
Industry Standard Archetecture.
ISA communicates with a 16-bit data path at a bus speed of 8 Mhz. The throughput of an
ISA slot is about 64 Mbps.
Multitasking
Is the ability of an operating system or application to run multiple programs at the
same time. MS-DOS was able to run only one program at a time. Operating systems such as
Microsoft's Windows 95 are able to run multiple programs at once.
Multithreading
The ability to run several applications through the processor at the same time.
OCR
Optical Character Recognition.
The ability of software to scan written text and recognize it to put into a word processing
format or interpret a command.
Parallel Port
A means of communication with an external device. A parallel port uses eight wires for
transmission of data, making it several times faster than a serial port which uses two.
Partition
A section on a hard drive that is designated as and formatted as non-empty space.
A partition is assigned a letter such as C: or D:. The difference between partitioned
space and non partitioned space is that it is accessible by and operating system and
has a file allocation system.
PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect
Local Bus. Bus interface that communicates with a 32-bit data path at a rate of 33 Mhz.
At this rate, the throughput is about 800 Mbps. With a 64-bit extension, a throughput of
about 1600 Mbps can be achieved.
PCMCIA
Portable Computer Memory
Card Association. A PCMCIA card is often used
with laptops as modems, ethernet connections, or other peripheral devices. They use
a 16-bit data path and have 168 pins.
Serial Port
Method of communicating with an external device. Uses two wires for transmission of
data. One for each direction.
Swap file
Is a file on your hard disk that is allocated to be frequently written to and read from.
The purpose is to temporarily store data in ram when it is not readily needed. The attempt
is to find a balance between the time it takes to recache the memory from the program location
and the amount of ram that must be occupied by data that is not in immediate use.
V-Bus
Vitesse Bus. Bus interface that communicates with a 64-bit data path
at a rate of up to 66 Mhz. Throughput is about 4000 Mbps.
VGA
Video Graphics Array.
Virtual Memory
Is used to reduce the amount of data needed to store in ram. For operating systems with
multitasking capabilities memory can be filled very quickly. In order to minimize this, a
program that is running in the background is moved from ram to the hard disk swap file.
This frees up
some ram to be used with the program in the foreground. This information is written to the
hard disk to what is called a swapfile. This essentially makes the hard drive and extension
of your ram.
VLB
VESA Local Bus. VESA is an acronym
for Video Electronics Standards
Association.
ZIF socket
Zero Insertion Force socket.
Refers to the type of processor socket in which no force is needed to secure the processor
and make contact with the socket. This lessens the likelihood of damage to the socket, cpu,
or motherboard.
