Glossary

Instant Gigabit Series

10BaseT - An Ethernet standard that uses twisted wire pairs.

100BaseTX - IEEE physical layer specification for 100 Mbps over two pairs of Category 5 UTP or STP wire.

1000BASE-T - provides half-duplex (CSMA/CD) and full-duplex 1000Mbps Ethernet service over Category 5 links as defined by ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-A. Topology rules for 1000BASE-T are the same as those used for 100BASE-TX. Category 5 link lengths are limited to 100 meters by the ANSI/TIA/EIA-568- A cabling standard. Only one CSMA/CD repeater will be allowed in a collision domain.

Adapter - Printed circuit board that plugs into a PC to add to capabilities or connectivity to a PC. In a networked environment, a network interface card (NIC) is the typical adapter that allows the PC or server to connect to the intranet and/or Internet.

Auto-negotiate- To automatically determine the correct settings. The term is often used with communications and networking. For example, Ethernet 10/100 cards, hubs and switches can determine the highest speed of the node they are connected to and adjust their transmission rate accordingly.

Backbone - The part of a network that connects most of the systems and net- works together and handles the most data.

Bandwidth - The transmission capacity of a given facility, in terms of how much data the facility can

transmit in a fixed amount of time; expressed in bits per second (bps).

CAT 3 - ANSI/EIA (American National Standards Institute/Electronic Industries Association) Standard 568 is one of several standards that specify "categories" (the singular is commonly referred to as "CAT") of twisted pair cabling systems (wires, junctions, and connectors) in terms of the data rates that they can sustain. CAT 3 cable has a maximum throughput of 16 Mbps and is usually utilized for 10BaseT networks.

EtherFast® 10/100/1000 8+1 Workgroup GigaSwitch

CAT 5 - ANSI/EIA (American National Standards Institute/Electronic Industries Association) Standard 568 is one of several standards that specify "categories" (the singular is commonly referred to as "CAT") of twisted pair cabling systems (wires, junctions, and connectors) in terms of the data rates that they can sustain. CAT 5 cable has a maximum throughput of 100 Mbps and is usually utilized for 100BaseTX networks.

CAT 5e - The additional cabling performance parameters of return loss and far- end crosstalk (FEXT) specified for 1000BASE-T and not specified for 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX are related to differences in the signaling imple- mentation. 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX signaling is unidirectional-signals are transmitted in one direction on a single wire pair. In contrast, Gigabit Ethernet is bi-directional-signals are transmitted simultaneously in both direc- tions on the same wire pair; that is, both the transmit and receive pair occupy the same wire pair .

Data Packet - One frame in a packet-switched message. Most data communi- cations is based on dividing the transmitted message into packets. For example, an Ethernet packet can be from 64 to 1518 bytes in length.

Dynamic Routing - The ability for a router to forward data via a different route based on the current conditions of the communications circuits. For example, it can adjust for overloaded traffic or failing lines and is much more flexible than static routing, which uses a fixed forwarding path.

Ethernet - IEEE standard network protocol that specifies how data is placed on and retrieved from a common transmission medium. Has a transfer rate of 10 Mbps. Forms the underlying transport vehicle used by several upper-level proto- cols, including TCP/IP and XNS.

Fast Ethernet - A 100 Mbps technology based on the 10Base-T Ethernet CSMA/CD network access method.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - A protocol used to transfer files over a TCP/IP net- work (Internet, UNIX, etc.). For example, after developing the HTML pages for a Web site on a local machine, they are typically uploaded to the Web server using FTP.

FTP includes functions to log onto the network, list directories and copy files. It can also convert between the ASCII and EBCDIC character codes. FTP operations can be performed by typing commands at a command prompt or via an FTP util- ity running under a graphical interface such as Windows. FTP transfers can also be initiated from within a Web browser by entering the URL preceded with ftp://.