Glossary GL-3
LATA: Local Access Transport Area. A LATA defines the historical boundary within which most Local Exchange Carriers (see also LEC) can provide end-to-end multi-switch service. If the called party is inside a different LATA than the call originator, the affected LECs may need to pass off the call to a long distance carrier (like AT&T, MCI, or Sprint). There are currently 198 LATAs in the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.
LEC: Local Exchange Carrier. A telephone company affiliate of a Regional Bell Operating Company or an independent telephone company, such as Southern New England Telephone (SNET), GTE, or hundreds of others.
Multilink PPP: A feature that allows a maximum digital connection of 128 Kbps by virtually linking two 56 Kbps or 64 Kbps B channels.
NI-1:National ISDN-1. Defined by Bellcore, National ISDN (NI-1) is an agreement among telephone companies and Customer Premise Equipment vendors to jointly provide the first phase of standards-based ISDN. National ISDN is a collection of standards to allow Customer Premise Equipment to work across different telephone company switches using the Basic Rate Interface.
NT1: Network Termination 1. A customer-owned device that connects to the U Interface and is responsible for the physical and electrical termination of the ISDN line. An NT1 is built into the Netopia ISDN Modem.
packet: A package of data. The data is usually in binary format and organized in a particular way for transmission. Each packet generally contains address information, the data being sent, and error-checking information.
PAP: Password Authentication Protocol. A method of security which involves an exchange of a plain text user ID and password to verify the user.
POP: Point of Presence. The location to which telephone companies and Internet Service Providers have an access point for services.
PPP:Point-to-Point Protocol. A link control protocol used for transmission of multi-protocol data over synchronous or asynchronous serial links.
