3Com Dual 56K manual Glossary

GLOSSARY

analog signals A variety of signals and wavelengths that can be transmitted over communications lines. An example is a voice call over the phone line.

BACP/BAP Bandwidth Allocation Control Protocol (BACP) and Bandwidth Allocation Protocol (BAP) are used in conjunction with the Multilink PPP feature. When Multilink PPP is negotiated, the BACP negotiates with the peer equipment to determine whether the peer supports BAP. If the peer supports BAP and agrees to use BAP, then the BAP negotiates the addition and removal of the second modem channel with the peer equipment based on a user-defined threshold. A key advantage of BACP/BAP is that it provides a higher probability of establishing a Multilink PPP call during high traffic conditions by providing a specific telephone number for the second modem channel to call.

baud rate A term used to measure the speed of an analog transmission from one point to another. Although not technically accurate, baud rate is commonly used synonymously with bit rate.

bit rate Also referred to as transmission rate. The number of binary digits (or bits) transmitted per second (bps). Communications channels using telephone channel modems are established at set bit rates, commonly 28,800, 56,000, or higher.

central office (CO) The facility at which individual telephone lines in a limited geographic area are connected to the public telephone network.

client-server :A networking architecture that makes use of distributed intelligence by exploiting the processing power of all attached computers on the network. A client device is usually a personal computer—often termed workstation in this context—and the server is often a high-speed computer. The term client/server is generally used in contrast to its counterpart, peer-to-peer, which applies to a network environment in which all devices are able to serve equally as both client and server, and in which there is no comparable division of function and hierarchy.

In the context of the LAN Modem’s dial-in scenarios, client-sideis used to refer to the LAN Modem or other device (and/or its associated LAN) that initiates a dial-out call to the LAN Modem that receives the call.

CHAP Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol. CHAP is one of two PPP authentication protocols; PAP is the other. An authentication protocol requests information to verify a valid user. CHAP is a stronger authentication method because it uses encryption and may repeatedly request user verification at any time after link establishment.

compression Compression is a method of reducing the size of data packets without losing any information. If you desire, the 56K modem can automatically compress data for