List of Glossary Terms

Glossary

Use the list below to find definitions for technical terms used in this manual.

802.11b

IEEE specification for wireless networking at 11 Mbps using direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) technology and operating in the unlicensed radio spectrum at 2.5GHz.

802.11g

A soon to be ratified IEEE specification for wireless networking at 54 Mbps using direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) technology and operating in the unlicensed radio spectrum at 2.5GHz. 802.11g is backwards compatible with 802.11b.

Cat 5

Category 5 unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cabling. An Ethernet network operating at 10 Mbits/second (10BASE-T) will often tolerate low quality cables, but at 100 Mbits/second (10BASE-Tx) the cable must be rated as Category 5, or Cat 5 or Cat V, by the Electronic Industry Association (EIA).

This rating will be printed on the cable jacket. Cat 5 cable contains eight conductors, arranged in four twisted pairs, and terminated with an RJ45 type connector. In addition, there are restrictions on maximum cable length for both 10 and 100 Mbits/second networks.

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.

Glossary

August 2004