G l o s s a r y
Hard drive
A spinning platter of magnetic data storage media where the platter is very stiff.
I/O
Input/Output. Data entering and leaving your notebook in electronic form.
I/O Port
The connector and associated control circuits for data entering and leaving your notebook in electronic form.
IDE
Intelligent Drive Electronics. A type of control interface for a hard drive which is inside the hard drive unit.
Infrared
Light just beyond the red portion of the visible light spectrum which is invisible to humans.
Infrastructure
A name of a wireless LAN configuration. This type of communication uses an access point.
Another type of communication is called AdHoc.
IP Address
An identifier for a computer or device on a TCP/IP network. Networks using the TCP/IP protocol route messages based on the IP address of the destination. The format of an IP address is a
Within an isolated network, you can assign IP addresses at random as long as each one is unique. However, connecting a private network to the Internet requires using registered IP addresses (called Internet addresses) to avoid duplicates.
The four numbers in an IP address are used in different ways to identify a particular network and a host on that network. Three regional Internet registries
Class A - supports 16 million hosts on each of 126 networks
Class B - supports 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks
Class C - supports 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks
The number of unassigned Internet addresses is running out, so a new classless scheme called CIDR is gradually
replacing the system based on classes A, B, and C and is tied to adoption of IPv6. (credit: webopedia.com)
IR
An abbreviation for infrared.
IrDA
Infrared Data Association. An organization which produces standards for communication using infrared as the carrier.
IRQ
Interrupt Request. An acronym for the hardware signal to the CPU that an external event has occurred which needs to be processed.
KB
Kilobyte.
LAN
Local Area Network. An interconnection of computers and peripherals within a single limited geographic location which can pass programs and data amongst themselves.
LCD
Liquid Crystal Display. A type of display which makes images by controlling the orientation of crystals in a crystalline liquid.
Lithium ion Battery
A type of rechargeable battery which has a high power- time life for its size and is not subject to the memory effect as Nickel Cadmium batteries.
LPT Port
Line Printer Port. A way of referring to parallel interface ports because historically line printers were the first and latter the most common device connected to parallel ports.
MAC Address
Media Access Control Address
A unique physical address of a network card. For Ethernet, the first three bytes are used as the vendor code, controlled and assigned by IEEE. The remaining three bytes are controlled by each vendor (preventing overlap), therefore, every Ethernet card is given a unique physical address in the world, being assigned with a different address from other cards. For Ethernet, frames are sent and received based on this address.
MB
Megabyte.
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