3Com WL-603 manual Glossary

166GLOSSARY

Ad Hoc mode Ad Hoc mode is a configuration supported by most wireless clients. It is used to connect a peer to peer network together without the use of an access point. It offers lower performance than infrastructure mode, which is the mode the router uses. (see Infrastructure mode.)

Auto-negotiationSome devices in the range support auto-negotiation. Auto-negotiation is where two devices sharing a link, automatically configure to use the best common speed. The order of preference (best first) is: 100BASE-TX full duplex, 100BASE-TX half duplex, 10BASE-T full duplex, and 10BASE-T half duplex. Auto-negotiation is defined in the IEEE 802.3 standard for Ethernet and is an operation that takes place in a few milliseconds.

Bandwidth The information capacity, measured in bits per second, that a channel can transmit. The bandwidth of Ethernet is 10 Mbps, the bandwidth of Fast Ethernet is 100 Mbps. The bandwidth for 802.11b wireless is 11Mbps.

Category 3 Cables One of five grades of Twisted Pair (TP) cabling defined by the EIA/TIA-586 standard. Category 3 is voice grade cable and can only be used in Ethernet networks (10BASE-T) to transmit data at speeds of up to 10 Mbps.

Category 5 Cables One of five grades of Twisted Pair (TP) cabling defined by the EIA/TIA-586 standard. Category 5 can be used in Ethernet (10BASE-T) and Fast Ethernet networks (100BASE-TX) and can transmit data up to speeds of 100 Mbps. Category 5 cabling is better to use for network cabling than Category 3, because it supports both Ethernet (10 Mbps) and Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) speeds.

Channel Similar to any radio device, the Wireless Cable/DSL router allows you to choose different radio channels in the wireless spectrum. A channel is a particular frequency within the 2.4GHz spectrum within which the Router operates.

Client The term used to describe the desktop PC that is connected to your network.