Palm OS Devices manual Welcome to Covers Wireless Glossary

Welcome to Covers Wireless Glossary

(For an encyclopaedia of commonly-used technical terms, please visit Whatis.com)

	GLOSSARY
TERMS	DEFINITION
3G	Third generation. Applies to wideband mobile services and
	applications. A standard with faster transmissions and the
	ability to roam globally.

802.11A family of wireless specifications developed by a working group of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. These specifications are used to manage packet traffic over a network and ensure that packets do not collide - which could result in loss of data - while traveling from their point of origin to their destination (that is, from device to device).

802.11b	Well-accepted standard for Wireless Local Area Networks
	(WLANS). Optimized for the unlicensed 2.4Ghz band, with
	speeds up to 11Mbps.
802.11g	Pending WLAN standard comparable to 802.11a (for
	speeds up to 54Mbps) but operating in the 2.4Ghz
	spectrum.
Access Fee	A monthly charge for the ability to connect to a wireless
	network (see provider plans). This is assessed monthly
	whether the mobile device is actually used or not.
Airtime	Total time that a wireless device is connected or in use for
	data/voice.
Bandwidth	A measure of network resource used for transmitting and
	receiving data. Measured in kbits/sec. Can be thought of as
	the size of a data "pipe".
Bluetooth	A wireless PAN (personal area network) geared for home
	and office that allows devices to connect over a short range
	(10m) without a line of sight. Uses 2.4 GHz range at 720kps
	within 30-foot range.
BPS	Bits per second. Measure of transmission speed or
	bandwidth.
Cache	A cache is a place to store something temporarily.
	Frequently used data/information can be stored without
	being downloaded again from the original server.
CDMA	Code Division Multiple Access is a multiple access
	technique, which uses code sequences as traffic channels
	within common radio channels.
Cradle	Mobile devices (PDA, phone) are rested on a cradle to
	perform synchronizations.
Downlink	Direction of data transfer from the network to the mobile
	device.
Dual mode	A term that describes a wireless device or system that can
	support two different protocols.
Encryption	Phantomfiber's Wireless Framework is the only true end-to-
	end 128-bit encrypted wireless solution commercially
	available. The solution is based on 128-bit Elliptic Curve
	Cryptography provided by Certicom (the industry leader in
	secure wireless information delivery) and provides a secure
	delivery method that parallels the most secure internet
	transaction servers in existence today. The WAP gateway is
	removed from the underlying model that delivers Covers
	Wireless to the end user.

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