3Com OfficeConnect 3CRWE53172 User Manual page 110

110 G
LOSSARY
Auto-negotiation
Bandwidth
Category 3 Cables
Category 5 Cables
Channel
Client
DHCP
Some devices in the OfficeConnect range support auto-negotiation.
Auto-negotiation is where two devices sharing a link, automatically
configure to use the best common speed. The order of preference (best
first) is: 100BASE-TX full duplex, 100BASE-TX half duplex, 10BASE-T full
duplex, and 10BASE-T half duplex. Auto-negotiation is defined in the IEEE
802.3 standard for Ethernet and is an operation that takes place in a few
milliseconds.
The information capacity, measured in bits per second, that a channel can
transmit. The bandwidth of Ethernet is 10 Mbps, the bandwidth of Fast
Ethernet is 100 Mbps. The bandwidth for 802.11b wireless is 11Mbps.
One of five grades of Twisted Pair (TP) cabling defined by the EIA/TIA-586
standard. Category 3 is voice grade cable and can only be used in
Ethernet networks (10BASE-T) to transmit data at speeds of up to 10
Mbps.
One of five grades of Twisted Pair (TP) cabling defined by the EIA/TIA-586
standard. Category 5 can be used in Ethernet (10BASE-T) and Fast
Ethernet networks (100BASE-TX) and can transmit data up to speeds of
100 Mbps. Category 5 cabling is better to use for network cabling than
Category 3, because it supports both Ethernet (10 Mbps) and Fast
Ethernet (100 Mbps) speeds.
Similar to any radio device, the OfficeConnect Wireless Cable/DSL
gateway allows you to choose different radio channels in the wireless
spectrum. A channel is a particular frequency within the 2.4GHz
spectrum within which the Gateway operates.
The term used to described the desktop PC that is connected to your
network.
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. This protocol automatically assigns
an IP address for every computer on your network. Windows 95,
Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 contain software that assigns IP
addresses to workstations on a network. These assignments are made by
the DHCP server software that runs on Windows NT Server, and Windows
95 and Windows 98 will call the server to obtain the address. Windows
98 will allocate itself an address if no DHCP server can be found.