Glossary Co-Cz 0-A | B | C-Cn | Co-Cz | D | E | F-G | H-I | J-L | M | N-O | P-Q | R | S | T | U-Z- Coating: A material put on a
fiber during the drawing process to protect it from the
environment.
- Coaxial Cable: A type of electrical cable in which a
signal central wire that carries the signal is surrounded by insulation & then
a complete metal shield. Ethernet, thinnet & RG62 cables are
examples.
- Coaxial Connector: A connector that has coaxial
construction & is used with coaxial cable.
- Code: A set of unambiguous
rules specifying the way in which data may be represented.
- Coil
Effect: The inductive effect exhibited by a spiral-wrapped shield,
especially above audio frequencies.
- Collapsed Backbone: A local area
network configuration wherein bridging & routing functions are located at the
main cross-connect & accessed via optical fiber (usually 2 or 4). Concentrators
(twisted pair to fiber) remain at the horizontal
cross-connects.
- Collision: The result of simultaneous transmission by
two DTEs on a shared bus. Both DTEs must re-transmit the data.
- Collision
Detect: A signal that one or more stations are contending with the local
station's transmission. The signal is sent by the physical layer to the data
link layer on an Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 node.
- Collision Domain: See
Segment
- Color Code: A color system for wire or circuit identification
by use of solid colors, traces, braids, surface printing, etc.
- Comite Consultatif International de Telegraphique et
Telephonique: (CCITT) French for "International Telephone & Telegraph
Advisory Council." It's an organization that plays a major role in the United
National International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The CCITT is responsible
for making technical recommendations about communications systems worldwide.
Every four years, CCITT updates the standards.
- Common Carrier: Public
transmission link such as the Bell or General Telephone systems
- Common Management Information Protocol: (CMIP) the network
management protocol defined by the OSI specifications. CMIP is used to convey
CMIS defined operations over an OSI network.
- Common
Management Information Services: (CMIS) The portion of the OSI network
management specification which defines the management services available to a
network management system. CMIS works with CMIP.
- Communications Control Unit: (CCU) A computer attached to a
host & dedicated to performing data communications functions. Its purpose is to
enable the host to perform other tasks. A CCU is also called a "Front End
Processor"
- Communications Server: An intelligent device (a computer)
providing communications functions; an intelligent, specially configured node
on a local area network, designed to enable remote communications access & exit
for LAN users.
- Community Antenna Television:
(CATV) Cable Television; data communications based on radio frequency (RF)
transmission, generally using 70 ohm coaxial cable as the transmission medium;
communications via coaxial cable where multiple frequency divided channels
allow mixed transmissions to be carried simultaneously;
broadband.
- Compaction: See Compression
- Composite Cable: Cable containing more
than one gauge size or a variety of circuit types, e.g. pairs, triples, quads,
coaxials etc.
- Composite Link: The line or circuit connecting a pair
of multiplexers or concentrators; the circuit carrying multiplexed
data.
- Compression: Any of several techniques that
reduce the number of bits required to represent information in data
transmission or stage (thus conserving bandwidth and/or memory), in which the
original form of the information can be reconstructed; also called
"compaction".
- Computer Emergency Response Team:
(CERT) The CERT was formed by DARPA in November 1988 in response to the
Internet worm incident. CERT exists to facilitate Internet-wide response to
computer security events involving Internet hosts & to conduct research
targeted at improving the security of existing systems. They maintain an
archive of security-related issues on their FTP server
- Concentrator:
A communications device that allows a shared transmission medium to accommodate
more data sources than channels currently available within the transmission
medium.
- Concentric Stranding: A group of uninsulated wires twisted
together & containing a center core with subsequent layers spirally wrapped
around the core to form a single conductor.
- Conditioning: The
addition of equipment to improve ("tune") the transmission characteristics of a
dedicated voice grade telephone line. Conditioning is done to allow for an
increase in transmission speed (Bit rate) without increasing the error
rate.
- Conductivity: Any material that allows electrons to flow
measured by the voltage applied.
- Conductor: A material that offers
little resistance to the flow of electrical current.
- Conduit: A
raceway of circular cross-section of the type permitted under the appropriate
electrical code.
- Configuration Management: A network management
function defined by the International Standards Organization (ISO). It involves
installing, reinitializing & modifying hardware & software.
- Connecting
Hardware: A device providing mechanical cable
terminations.
- Connection: A term used in the networking environment
to describe the path between two devices. A connection allows the exchange of
information between two or more devices. Equivalent terms are session &
circuit.
- Connection-Oriented: Refers to a protocol which uses virtual
circuits; the nodes which are the endpoint of the connection, or circuit,
maintain state control information. This allows them to correlate each packet
with previously received packets to provide error-free, loss-less packet
delivery.
- Connectionless Service: A protocol or service which does
not require that a virtual circuit be established between the endpoints: each
packet is processed independently. All commonly used LAN's provide
connectionless service as the basic packet delivery service
mechanism.
- Console: The terminal used to configure network devices at
boot or start up time.
- Contention: A situation when multiple users
compete for a transmission channel within a multiplexed digital
facility.
- Continuity Check: A test performed on a length of finished
wire or cable to determine if the electrical current flows continuously
throughout the length. Each conductor may also be checked against each other to
ascertain that no shorts exist.
- Control Cable: A cable used for
remote control operation of any type of electrical power
equipment.
- Control Signals: A category of signals in a DTE to DCE
interface specification. These signals control the data transmission.
- Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research
Networks: (CCIRN) A committee that provides a forum for North American &
European network research organizations to cooperate & plan.
- Core:
Typically made out of glass, the core is the light conducting central portion
of the optical fiber. It has a higher refractive index than the
cladding.
- Coupling: The transfer of energy between two or more cables
or components of a circuit.
- Coupling Loss (fiber optic): Signal
losses due to small differences in numerical aperture, core diameter, core
concentricity & tolerances in splicing connectors when two fibers are aligned.
Also known as splicing loss & transfer loss.
- Coverage: The calculated
percentage which defines the completeness with which a metal braid covers the
underlying surface. The higher percentage of coverage, the greater the
protection against external interference.
- CPU: See Central Processing Unit
- CRC: See Cyclic Redundancy Check
- Cross-connect: A facility for
the interconnection & termination of cabling.
- Crossover: Conductor
which runs through the cable & connect to a different pin number at each
end.
- Crosstalk: The unwanted electrical currents in conductors caused
by electromagnetic or electrostatic coupling from other conductors, or, the
signal on 1 pair leaks or jumps onto & adjacent pair. It is measured in
decibels (dB). Crosstalk must be at least 10 dB greater than the total cable
loss.
- CRT: See Cathode Ray
Tube
- CSA: See Canadian Standards
Association
- CSMA: See Carrier Sense
Multiple Access
- CSMA/CD: See Carrier
Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection
- CSU: See Channel Service Unit
- Current Loop: Method of interconnecting terminals &
transmitting signals a mark (binary1) is represented by current on the line, &
a space(binary 0) is represented by the absence of
current.
- Cut-through: Technique for examining incoming packets
whereby an Ethernet switch looks only at the first few bytes of a packet before
forwarding or filtering it. This process is faster than looking at a whole
packet, but also allows some bad packets to be forwarded.
- CXC:
Coaxial Cable.
- Cyberspace: The "world of computers & the society that
gathers around them," as referred to by William Gibson in his fantasy novel
"Neuromancer." It now loosely refers to the online world & even more loosely to
the Internet.
- Cyclic Redundancy Check: (CRC) An
error-detecting code appended to a packet to help the receiver determine if
errors were introducing during transmission. The CRC is specialized checksum
computed over the entire packet & added to the packet by transmitters LAN
controller hardware, & is checked for correctness by the receiving station's
hardware. Use of the CRC allows the LAN MAC layer to guarantee a very low
probability of incorrectly delivering a corrupted packet. Crossed Pinning:
Cable configuration that allows two DTE devices or two DCE devices to
communicate.
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