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Glossary of Technical Terms

Please see the information below for a definition of many of the technical terms found throughout our products section and other areas of our site. If there's a term you would like defined that you don't see on this list, use our new Submit-A-Term™ service to request that it be added!


Adaptive Equalization       Receiver technique that compensates for distortions in transmission media.
ADSL       Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. Twisted-pair modem technology that achieves data rates of up to 8 Mbps downstream to the subscriber and up to 1 Mbps upstream to the network at distances up to 18,000 feet.
Bandwidth       A range of signal frequencies, measured in cycles per second or Hertz (Hz). Also refers to the speed at which data is transmitted, measured in bits per second (bps).
Broadband Communications       Data transmissions at speeds of greater than 1.5 Mbps.
CMOS       Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. Technology used to manufacture silicon integrated circuits.
DBS       Digital Broadcast Satellite. A broadband communications technology that broadcasts digital television programming from satellites directly to dish antennas.
DSP       Digital Signal Processing. A signal processing technique that takes real-time, high-speed signals, such as radio, cellular phones, or satellite TV broadcasts, then mathematically alters it to improve the signal. This technology includes filtering, speech recognition, image enhancement, data compression, and noise reduction.
Ethernet (10BASE-T)       Networking protocol widely used in local area networks (LANs) for connecting devices by means of copper twisted-pair wiring at speeds of 10 Mbps.
Fast Ethernet (100BASE-T)       An extension to the 10BASE-T Ethernet network access method, Fast Ethernet operates at 100 Mbps.
FEC       Forward Error Correction. A receiver technique for correcting errors in the received data.
GHz       Giga Hertz. One billion cycles per second.
Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T)       An extension to the 100BASE-T Ethernet network access method which operates at 1,000 Mbps or equivalently 1 Gbps.
Headend       The central distribution point in a cable television system. Typically serves tens to hundreds of thousands of homes.
HFC       Hybrid Fiber Coax. Upgraded cable plant which uses a combination of fiber optic cable in the backbone and coaxial cable in the subscriber feeder plant.
IC       Integrated Circuit.
Kbps       Kilobits per second.
LAN       Local Area Network. A private data communications network linking a variety of data devices such as computers and printers within an office or home environment.
LMDS       Local Multipoint Distribution System. A broadband wireless communications network that uses microwave frequencies around 28 GHz to transmit video and data to residences over a cellular-like network at distances under a few miles.
MAC       Media Access Control. Protocol for controlling the upstream and downstream traffic flow in a local or wide area network.
Mbps       Megabits per second. Million bits per second.
MCNS/DOCSIS       Multimedia Cable Network System / Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. Industry specification that defines the technical equipment for high-speed cable modem and headend equipment.
MMDS       Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service. A broadband wireless communications network that uses microwave frequencies around 2.5 GHz to transmit video to residences at distances up to tens of miles.
MPEG       Moving Pictures Experts Group. Industry standard for compressing and decompressing digital audio video signals.
NIC       Network Interface Card. Plug-in adapter card enables a computer to connect to a LAN.
QAM       Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. A digital modulation technique that allows very efficient transmission of data over media with limited available bandwidth.
QPSK       Quadrature Phase Shift Keying. A digital technique which is widely employed in direct broadcast satellite transmission systems.
VDSL       Very High Bit-Rate Digital Subscriber Line. Twisted pair modem technology that achieves data rates up to 52 Mbps downstream to the network at distances up to 4,000 feet.
WAN       Wide Area Network. A data communications network, such as the Internet, which links a variety of data devices over a large geographical distance.
xDSL       Generic representation of the entire family of Digital Subscriber Line technology spanning data rates from 128 kbps to 52 Mbps depending on the distance between the central office subscriber.

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