3Com 10/100BASE-T4 PCI manual Mac

4GLOSSARY

MAC

Media access control. The operational scheme that gives each network node orderly access to the network cable. CSMA/CD is a MAC protocol that determines how nodes on the network share access to the cable.

NDIS

Network Driver Interface Specification. Defines the LAN Manager network driver architecture and interfaces that let a DOS or OS/2 system support network adapters. This architecture provides a standardized way to write drivers for network adapters.

NetWare

A series of network operating systems and related products made by Novell, Inc.

ODI driver

Open Data-Link Interface. A MAC-level specification developed by Novell and Apple®. Drivers complying with this specification can work with NetWare 2.x, 3.x, and 4.x. Like NDIS, ODI drivers support multiple protocols and adapters, and can be unloaded from memory to conserve conventional DOS RAM space.

Parallel Tasking

3Com’s third-generation Ethernet adapter architecture. Parallel Tasking technology accelerates data transfer by processing data packets simultaneously instead of sequentially. For example, when transmission is the task, the Parallel Tasking architecture begins to write data to the network even before an entire frame has been loaded into the adapter’s buffer memory. This permits complete parallelism in all data transfers.

PCI

Peripheral Component Interconnect. An advanced high- performance local bus that supports multiple peripheral devices. At 33 MHz, the PCI bus transfers 32 bits of data at up to 132 Mbps.