Prestige 643 ADSL Router
Glossary U
the public and having its own computer servers to provide the services offered.
LAN Local Area Network is a shared communication system to which many computers
are attached. A LAN, as its name implies, is limited to a local area. This has to do
more with the electrical characteristics of the medium than the fact that many early
LANs were designed for departments, although the latter accurately describes a LAN
as well. LANs have different topologies, the most common being the linear bus and
the star configuration.
LEC Local Exchange Carrier: one of the new U.S. telephone access and service providers
that have grown up with the recent U.S. deregulation of telecommunications.
MAC On a local area network (LAN) or other network, the MAC (Media Access Control)
address is your computer's unique hardware number. (On an Ethernet LAN, it is the
same as your Ethernet address.) The MAC layer frames data for transmission over
the network, then passes the frame to the physical layer interface where it is
transmitted as a stream of bits.
NAT Network Address Translation is the translation of an Internet Protocol address used
within one network to a different IP address known within another network – see
also SUA.
NAT Server Set A NAT server set is a list of inside servers (behind NAT on the LAN) that you can
make visible to the outside world.
NDIS Network Driver Interface Specification is a Windows® specification for how
communication protocol programs (such as TCP/IP) and network device drivers
should communicate with each other.
Network Any time you connect two or more computers together so that they can share
resources, you have a computer network. Connect two or more networks together
and you have an internet.
NIC Network Interface Card. A board that provides network communication capabilities
to and from a computer system. Also called an adapter.
Node Any single computer connected to a network.
PAP Password Authentication Protocol PAP is a security protocol that requires users to
enter a password before accessing a secure system. The user’s name and password
are sent over the wire to a server, where they are compared with a database of user
account names and passwords. This technique is vulnerable to wiretapping
(eavesdropping) because the password can be captured and used by someone to log
onto the system.
