GLOSSARY

BANDWIDTH - The measure of information that can be transferred between computers or over networks in a given amount of time. The rates are expressed in kilobits per second.

BROADBAND - A general term used in reference to high-speed Internet services, including those provided through cable, DSL, and/or satellite.

CABLE INTERNET ACCESS - The term cable Internet access refers to the delivery of Internet service over this infrastructure. The proliferation of cable modems, along with DSL technology, has enabled broadband Internet access in many countries.

Bandwidth of business cable modem service typically range from 3 Megabits per second (Mbit/s) up to 30 Mbit/s or more. The upstream bandwidth on residential cable modem service usually ranges from 384 Kilobits per second (kbit/s) to 6 Mbit/s or more. There are few attempts to offer different service tiers beyond the traditional 'home' and 'business' designations.

CABLE MODEM - A cable modem is a type of modem that provides access to a data signal sent over the cable television infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access, taking advantage of unused bandwidth on a cable television network. There were 22.5 million cable modem users in the United States during Q1 2005, up from 17.4 million in Q1 2004. They are also commonly found in Australia, Canada and Europe.

Under a stricter definition, a cable modem is not a modem but a network bridge. ISPs may sometimes sell or rent hardware combining a bridge with network hub or router hardware as a cable modem.

DIAL UP - Dial-up access is a form of Internet access through which the client uses a modem connected to a computer and a telephone line to dial into an Internet service provider's (ISP) node to establish a modem-to-modem link, which is then routed to the Internet.

DOMAIN - A name that identifies a computer or computers on the internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site's URL, e.g. wikipedia.org. This type of domain name is also called a hostname

DSL - DSL or xDSL, is a family of technologies that provide digital data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop, although in recent years, many have adopted digital subscriber line as a more marketing-friendly term for the most popular version of consumer-ready DSL, ADSL.

Typically, the download speed of consumer DSL services ranges from 256 kilobits per second (kbit/s) to 24,000 kbit/s, depending on DSL technology, line conditions and service level implemented. Typically, upload speed is lower than download speed for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) and equal to download speed for Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL).

DSL MODEM - An ADSL transceiver, also known as a ADSL modem or DSL modem, is a device used to connect one or more computers to a phone line, in order to use an ADSL service. Some ADSL modems also manage the connection and sharing of the ADSL service with a group of machines, making an ADSL router or ADSL modem/router a more accurate name for the device. A DSL modem acts as the ADSL Terminal Unit or ATU-R, as the telephone companies call it.

ETHERNET - This term refers to the most common technology used to connect computers over a LAN (Local Area Network). Ethernet is popular because it can be used with almost any computer, because it can transfer around 10 million bits per second, and because its components are readily available.

FIOS - FiOS is a fiber to the premises (FTTP) telecommunications service offered in the United States by Verizon. According to Verizon's Trademark (No. 3001081), "Fios" is an Irish word for "knowledge". In mailings to New Jersey customers, however, Verizon states that it stands for "fiber-optic service." Verizon has attracted consumer and media attention in the area of broadband Internet access as the first major U.S. carrier to offer such a service. Verizon has also launched a television service with its fiber optic lines and is expected to become a competitor to local cable television companies over the next 10 years. It will compete with current Triple Play offers, where the local cable company offers broadband Internet access, digital cable (see List of Verizon FiOS channels), and VoIP telephone service. FiOS started as a pilot program in Keller, Texas, but availability of the Internet service has expanded to many states (see Verizon FiOS Availability).

ISP- An Internet service provider (abbr. ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a business or organization that provides to consumers access to the Internet and related services

MODEM - A modem (from modulate and demodulate) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data. Modems can be used over any means of transmitting analog signals, from driven diodes to radio. Experiments have even been performed in the use of modems over the medium of two cans connected by a string.

The most familiar example is a voiceband modem that turns the digital '1s and 0s' of a personal computer into sounds that can be transmitted over the telephone lines of Plain Old Telephone Systems (POTS), and once received on the other side, converts those sounds back into 1s and 0s. Modems are generally classified by the amount of data they can send in a given time, normally measured in bits per second, or "bps".

Faster modems are used by Internet users every day, notably cable modems and ADSL modems. In telecommunications, "radio modems" transmit repeating frames of data at very high data rates over microwave radio links. Some microwave modems transmit more than a hundred million bits per second. Optical modems transmit data over optical fibers. Most intercontinental data links now use optical modems transmitting over undersea optical fibers. Optical modems routinely have data rates in excess of a billion (1x10⁹) bits per second.

ROUTER - A router is a computer networking device that buffers and forwards data packets across an internetwork toward their destinations, through a process known as routing. Routing occurs at layer 3 (the Network layer e.g. IP) of the OSI seven-layer protocol stack.

So for example, a router at home connects the Internet Service Provider's (ISP) network (usually on an Internet address) together with the LAN in the home (typically using a range of private IP addresses, see network address translation) and a single broadcast domain. The switch connects devices together to form the LAN. Sometimes the switch and the router are combined together in one single package sold as a multiple port router.

In order to route packets, a router communicates with other routers using routing protocols and using this information creates and maintains a routing table. The routing table stores the best routes to certain network destinations, the "routing metrics" associated with those routes, and the path to the next hop router. See the routing article for a more detailed

URL - Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable documents was the core idea of the World Wide Web. In the early times, these identifiers were variously called "document names", "Web addresses" and "Uniform Resource Locators". These names were misleading, however, because not all identifiers were locators, and even for those that were, this was not their defining characteristic. Nevertheless, by the time the RFC 1630 formally defined the term "URI" as a generic term best suited to the concept, the term "URL" had gained widespread popularity, which has continued to this day.

WEB SITE - A website (alternatively, Web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on a Web server, usually accessible via the Internet or a LAN.

WIRELESS NETWORK - This term refers to a connection between computers that is made through radio frequencies instead of through cables.