Adsl

User’s Manual for the NETGEAR Double 108 Mbps Wireless PC Card 32-bit CardBus WG511U

Short for asymmetric digital subscriber line, a technology that allows data to be sent over existing copper telephone lines at data rates of from 1.5 to 9 Mbps when receiving data (known as the downstream rate) and from 16 to 640 Kbps when sending data (known as the upstream rate).

ADSL requires a special ADSL modem. ADSL is growing in popularity as more areas around the world gain access.

A Certificate Authority is a trusted third-party organization or company that issues digital certificates used to create digital signatures and public-private key pairs.

Certificate Authority

A Certificate Authority is a trusted third-party organization or company that issues digital certificates used to create digital signatures and public-private key pairs. The role of the CA in this process is to guarantee that the individual granted the unique certificate is, in fact, who he or she claims to be. Usually, this means that the CA has an arrangement with a financial institution, such as a credit card company, which provides it with information to confirm an individual's claimed identity. CAs are a critical component in data security and electronic commerce because they guarantee that the two parties exchanging information are really who they claim to be.

DHCP

An Ethernet protocol specifying how a centralized DHCP server can assign network configuration information to multiple DHCP clients. The assigned information includes IP addresses, DNS addresses, and gateway (router) addresses.

DNS

Short for Domain Name System (or Service), an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Because domain names are alphabetic, they're easier to remember. The Internet however, is really based on IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name, therefore, a DNS service must translate the name into the corresponding IP address. For example, the domain name www.example.com might translate to 198.105.232.4. The DNS system is, in fact, its own network. If one DNS server doesn't know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one, and so on, until the correct IP address is returned.

Domain Name

A descriptive name for an address or group of addresses on the Internet. Domain names are of the form of a registered entity name plus one of a number of predefined top level suffixes such as .com, .edu, .uk, etc. For example, in the address mail.NETGEAR.com, mail is a server name and NETGEAR.com is the domain.

DSL

Short for digital subscriber line, but is commonly used in reference to the asymmetric version of this technology (ADSL) that allows data to be sent over existing copper telephone lines at data rates of from 1.5 to 9 Mbps when receiving data (known as the downstream rate) and from 16 to 640 Kbps when sending data (known as the upstream rate).

Glossary

August 2004