Table of Contents
Advertisement
ISP: Internet Service Provider. An ISP is a business that provides connectivity to
the Internet for individuals and other businesses or organizations.
LAN: Local Area Network. A LAN is a group of computers and devices connected
together in a relatively small area (such as a house or an office). Your home network
is considered a LAN.
MAC Address: MAC stands for Media Access Control. A MAC address is the
hardware address of a device connected to a network, and is a unique identifier for
a device with an Ethernet interface. It is composed of two parts: three bytes of data
that corresponds to the Manufacturer ID (unique for each manufacturer), and three
bytes that are often used as the product's serial number.
NAT: Network Address Translation. This process allows all of the computers on your
home network to use one IP address. Using the broadband router's NAT capability,
you can access the Internet from any computer on your home network without
having to purchase more IP addresses from your ISP.
PPPoE: Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet. Point-to-Point Protocol is a secure
data transmission method originally created for dial-up connections; PPPoE is for
Ethernet connections. PPPoE relies on two widely accepted standards, Ethernet
and the Point-to-Point Protocol. It is a communications protocol for transmitting
information over Ethernet between different manufacturers.
Protocol: A protocol is a set of rules for interaction agreed upon between multiple
parties so that when they interface with each other based on such a protocol, the
interpretation of their behavior is well-defined and can be made objectively, without
confusion or misunderstanding.
Router: A router is an intelligent network device that forwards packets between
different networks based on network layer address information such as IP addresses.
Subnet Mask: A subnet mask, which may be a part of the TCP/IP information
provided by your ISP, is a set of four numbers (e.g., 255.255.255.0) configured like
an IP address. It's used to create IP address numbers used only within a particular
network (as opposed to valid IP address numbers recognized by the Internet,
which must be assigned by InterNIC).
TCP/IP, UDP: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol and Unreliable
Datagram Protocol are the standard protocols for data transmission over the Internet.
Both TCP and UDP are transport layer protocols. TCP performs proper error
detection and error recovery, and thus is reliable. UDP, on the other hand, is not
reliable. They both run on top of the IP (Internet Protocol), a network layer protocol.
WAN: A Wide Area Network connects computers located in geographically
separate areas (e.g., different buildings, cities, countries). The Internet is a wide
area network.
57
GLOSSARY
Advertisement
Table of Contents
