Appendix B Glossary
Page 51 © June 2005
IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, www.ieee.org. A
membership organization that includes engineers, scientists and students in electronics
and allied fields. It has more than 300,000 members and is involved with setting
standards for computers and communications.
Infrastructure
mode
A client setting providing connectivity to an AP. As compared to Ad-Hoc mode,
whereby PCs communicate directly with each other, clients set in Infrastructure
Mode all pass data through a central AP. The AP not only mediates wireless
network traffic in the immediate neighborhood, but also provides communication
with the wired network. See Ad-Hoc and AP.
I/O The term used to describe any operation, program or device that transfers data to or
from a computer.
Internet
appliance
A computer that is intended primarily for Internet access, is simple to set up and
usually does not support installation of third-party software. These computers
generally offer customized web browsing, touch-screen navigation, e-mail services,
entertainment and personal information management applications.
IP A set of rules used to send and receive messages at the Internet address level.
IP (Internet
Protocol)
telephony
Technology that supports voice, data and video transmission via IP -based LANs,
WANs, and the Internet. This includes VoIP (Voice over IP).
IP address A 32-bit number that identifies each sender or receiver of information that is sent
across the Internet. An IP address has two parts: an identifier of a particular network
on the Internet and an identifier of the particular device (which can be a server or a
workstation) within that network.
IPX-SPX IPX, short for Internetwork Packet Exchange, a networking protocol used by the
Novell NetWare operating systems. Like UDP/IP, IPX is a datagram protocol used
for connectionless communications. Higher-level protocols, such as SPX and NCP,
are used for additional error recovery services. Sequenced Packet Exchange, SPX,
a transport layer protocol (layer 4 of the OSI Model) used in Novell Netware
networks. The SPX layer sits on top of the IPX layer (layer 3) and provides
connection-oriented services between two no des on the network. SPX is used
primarily by client/server applications. Whereas the IPX protocol is similar to IP,
SPX is similar to TCP. Together, therefore, IPX-SPX provides connection services
similar to TCP/IP.
ISA A type of internal computer bus tha t allows the addition of card-based components
like modems and network adapters. ISA has been replaced by PCI and is not very