Cabletron Systems 9A000 manual Glossary

GLOSSARY

MicroChannel - a proprietary 16- or 32-bit bus developed by IBM for its PS/2 computers’ internal expansion cards; also offered by others.

MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) - the largest unit of data that can be sent over a type of physical medium.

Multi-homed- a device that has both an ATM and another network connec- tion, typically Ethernet.

Multiplexing - a function within a layer that interleaves the information from multiple connections into one connection. (See demultiplexing.)

Multipoint Access - user access in which more than one terminal equipment (TE) is supported by a single network termination.

Multipoint-to-Point Connection - a Point-to-Multipoint Connection may have zero bandwidth from the Root Node to the Leaf Nodes, and non-zero return bandwidth from the Leaf Nodes to the Root Node. Such a connection is also known as a Multipoint-to-Point Connection.

Multipoint-to-Multipoint Connection - a collection of associated ATM VC or VP links, and their associated endpoint nodes, with the following properties:

1.All N nodes in the connection, called Endpoints, serve as a Root Node in a Point-to-Multipoint connection to all of the (N-1) remaining endpoints.

2.Each of the endpoints on the connection can send information directly to any other endpoint, but the receiving endpoint cannot distinguish which of the endpoints is sending information without additional (e.g., higher layer) information.

Network Module - ATM port interface cards which may be individually added or removed from any ForeRunner ATM switch to provide a diverse choice of connection alternatives. Each network module provides between one and six full-duplex ATM physical connections to the ForeRunner switch.

NMS (Network Management Station) - the system responsible for managing a network or a portion of a network. The NMS talks to network management agents, which reside in the managed nodes.

NNI (Network-to-Network Interface or Network Node Interface) - the inter- face between two public network pieces of equipment.

NuBus - a high-speed bus used in the Macintosh family of computers, struc- tured so that users can put a card into any slot on the board without creating conflict over the priority between those cards

OAM (Operation and Maintenance) Cell - a cell that contains ATM LM information. It does not form part of the upper layer information transfer.

OpenView - Hewlett-Packard’s network management software.

g-13