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Safety Getting Started Installation USB Drivers Usage Troubleshooting Glossary
Glossary
The following is a list of common cable and networking terms.
Terms and Abbreviations
A/B Cable
A USB cable that has a narrow rectangular connector on one end (A) and a
notched square connector (B) on the other end.
Category 5 (Cat5)
A high-quality type of cable, used for Fast Ethernet (100BaseT) connec-
tions. When purchasing Ethernet cables, always look for Category 5 cable.
Coaxial cable (coax)
A thin wire, used to connect your television and Cable Modem to the cable
TV system. You can buy coax from any electronics retailer and many dis-
count stores.
Cross-over
An Ethernet cable used to connect two hubs (or a hub and a cable modem)
together. Also, some Ethernet hubs may have built-in cross-over on one or
more ports (which eliminates the need for a cross-over cable).
DHCP
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. An IP protocol used to provide an IP
address and location of services (such as DNS and TFTP) needed by a
device connecting to the network. DHCP allows the cable company to con-
figure your computer’s networking software for you.
DNS
Domain Name Service (Server). An IP service that associates a domain
name (such as www.example.com) with an IP address.
Downstream
In an HFC network, the direction from the head-end to the subscriber.
Some older cable documentation may refer to this as the forward path.
