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The sockets built into a PC motherboard that are designed to accommodate add-on cards, such as NICs.
Adapter Slot
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The process by which a NIC driver automatically selects an operating mode (speed and duplex mode).
Autonegotiation
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The number of parallel lines that make up a type of bus.
Bus Width
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A credit-care-size expansion car used primarily to add functionality to laptops.
Cardbus, ExpressCard, PCMCIA cards
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A speacialized collection of parallel lines in a PC used to transfer data between the CPU and peripheral devices and occasionally from one peripheral device to another.
Computer Bus
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A software program that mediates communication between an operating system and a device for the purpose of sending and recieving input and output from that device.
Device Driver
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A high-speed external serial bus that supprts bandwidths up to 400 Mbps and can connect up to 63 devices; also known as IEEE 1394.
FireWire
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Originally an 8-bit PC bus architechture, but upgraded to 16-bit with the introduction of the IBM PC/AT in 1984.
Industry Standard Architechture (ISA)
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A string of characters that a user must supply to wireless NIC software so that the computer can decrypt communications on a wireless LAN, therefore allowing the client to access the LAN.
Keycode
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The number that identifies the physical address of a network computer.
Media Access Control (MAC) address
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A driver standard for providing an interface between a network interface card and the network medium; this standard enables a NIC to use multiple protocols.
Network Device Interface Standard (NDIS)
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The hardware device that mediates communications between a computer and the networking medium.
Network Interface Card (NIC)
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The technique of spreading bits of data across multiple parallel data lines to transmit them simultaneously, instead of according to an orcinal and temporal sequence.
Parrallel Transmission
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A high-speed bus standard that relies on serial communications aranged in lanes to provide communications up to 8 GBps.
PCI Express
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The 32- and 64-bit PC bus architechture that currently prevails as the best and fastest of all available bus types, operating at 33 and 66 MHz.
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)
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The Microsoft requirements for PC motherboards, buses, adapter cards, and operating systems that enable a PC to detect and configure hardware on a system automatically.
Plug and Play (PnP)
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The set of internal diagnostic and status-checking routines a PC and its peripheral devices run each time the computer is powered on.
power-on self test (POST)
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A technique for transmitting data signals that sends each bit's worth of data (or its analog equivalent) one at a time, in sequence.
Serial Transmission
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The name assigned to a wirless LAN.
Service Set Identifier (SSID)
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A technique for a computer's CPU to address memory on an adapter as though it were the computer's own main memory.
Shared Adapter Memory
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A technique for an adapter to address a computer's main memory as though it resided on the adapter.
Shared System Memory
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In terms of NICs, features that improve network accessability for remote users, especially those using applications that require higher bandiwdth, such as streaming video or multimedia.
Traffic Management
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A hot-plugged Plug and Play serial interface; USB ports support peripheral devices, such as mouses keyboards, in addition to some printers, scanners, and monitors.
Universal Serial Bus (USB)
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A unified driver standard that allows a single driver to be written for any 32-bit version of Windows.
Win32 Driver Model (WDM)
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