Bandwidth Alternatives:
The communications speed and capacity of telecommunications networks can be classified by bandwidth. This is the frequency range of a telecommunications channel; it determines the channel’s maximum transmission rate (voiceband, medium-band, and broadband)..

Business Value of the Internet:
Strategic capabilities which enable businesses to disseminate information globally, communicate interactively with customized information and services for individual customers, and foster collaboration of people and integration of business processes within the enterprise and with business partners.

Cellular Phone System:
A radio communications technology that divides a metropolitan area into a honeycomb of cells to greatly increase the number of frequencies and thus the users that can take advantage of mobile phone service.

Client/Server Networks:
A computing environment where end user workstations (clients) are connected to micro or mini LAN (servers) or possibly to a mainframe (superserver).

Coaxial Cable:
A sturdy copper or aluminum wire wrapped with spacers to insulate and protect it. Groups of coaxial cables may be bundled together in a bigger cable for ease of installation.

Communications Satellites:
Earth satellites placed in stationary orbits above the equator that serve as relay stations for communications signals transmitted from earth stations.

Downsizing:
Moving to smaller computing platforms, such as from mainframe systems to networks of personal computers and servers.

Extranets:
A network that links selected resources of the intranet of a company with its customers, suppliers, and other business partners, using the Internet or private networks to link the organizations’ intranets.

Fiber Optic Cable:
The technology that uses cables consisting of very thin filaments of glass fibers that can conduct the light generated by laser at frequencies that approach the speed of light.

The Internet:
A global network of millions of business, government, educational, and research networks, computer systems, and end users.

Internet Revolution:
The explosive growth of the Internet is the revolutionary technology phenomenon of the 1990s. The Internet has become the largest and most important network of networks today, and is evolving into the information superhighway of tomorrow.

Internet Technologies:
The Internet and its technologies are being used to build interconnected enterprises and global networks, like intranets and extranets that form information superhighways to support enterprise collaboration, electronic commerce, and internal business applications.

Internetwork Processors:
Internetwork processors such as bridges, routers, hubs, or gateways to other LANs or wide area networks interconnect many LANs.

Interorganizational Networks:
Telecommunications networks that interconnect organizations with other organizations, such as businesses and their customers and suppliers.

Intranets:
Open, secure Internet-like networks within organizations.

Legacy Systems:
The older, traditional mainframe-based business information systems of an organization.

Local Area Network (LAN):
A communications network that typically connects computers, terminals, and other computerized devices within a limited physical area such as an office, building, manufacturing plant, or other work site.

Modem (MOdulation - DEModulation):
A device that converts the digital signals from input/output devices into appropriate frequencies at a transmission terminal and converts them back into digital signals at a receiving terminal.

Multiplexer:
An electronic device that allows a single communications channel to carry simultaneous data transmissions from many terminals.

Network Architectures - OSI:
The International Standards Organization (ISO) has developed a seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) to serve as a standard model for network architectures in order to promote an open, simple, flexible, and efficient telecommunications environment.

Network Architectures - TCP/IP:

The Internet’s protocol suite is called Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). TCP/IP consists of five levels of protocols that can be related to the seven layers of the OSI architecture. TCP/IP is used by the Internet and all intranets and extranets.

Network Computing:
A network-centric view of computing in which "the network is the computer," that is, the view that computer networks are the central computing resource of any computing environment.

Network Operating System:
A network operating system is a program that is used to control telecommunications and the use of and sharing of network resources.

Network Server:
LANs use a powerful microcomputer with a large disk capacity as a file server or network server. The server handles resource sharing and telecommunications.

Network Topologies:
Two basic types of network topologies, or structures, in telecommunications networks include point-to-point lines and multidrop lines. In point-to-point lines, each terminal is connected by its own line to a computer system. In multidrop lines, several terminals share each data communications line to a computer.

Open Systems:
Model of network protocols enabling any computer connected to a network to communicate with any other computer on the same network or a different network, regardless of the manufacturer.

Protocol:
A set of rules and procedures for the control of communications in a communications network.

Switching Alternatives:
In telecommunications transmission, a variety of switching alternatives exists. These include: circuit switching, message switching, packet switching, and cell switching.

Telecommunications Channels:
Telecommunications channels are the part of a telecommunications network that connects the message source with the message receiver. It includes the physical equipment used to connect one location to another for the purpose of transmitting and receiving information.

Telecommunications Media:
Telecommunications media are the physical media used by telecommunications channels. They include, twisted-pair wire, coaxial cables, fiber optic cables, terrestrial microwave, communications satellite, cellular, and infrared systems.

Telecommunications Network Components:
Telecommunications components include terminals, telecommunications processors, telecommunications channels and media, computers, and telecommunications control software.

Telecommunications Processors:
Multiplexers, concentrators, communications controllers, and cluster controllers that allow a communications channel to carry simultaneous data transmissions from many terminals. They may also perform error monitoring, diagnostics and correction, modulation-demodulation, data compression, data coding and decoding, message switching, port contention, and buffer storage.

Telecommunications Software:
Telecommunications software, including network operating systems, telecommunications monitors, web browsers, and middleware, control and support the communications activity in a telecommunications network.

Trends in Telecommunications:
Toward a greater number of competitive vendors, carriers, and services; toward integrated, digital, global networks for voice, data, and video, with heavy use of fiber optic lines and satellite channels; toward the pervasive use of telecommunications networks in support of business operations, managerial decision making, and strategic advantage in global markets.

Virtual Private Network:
A secure network that uses the Internet as its main backbone network to connect the intranets of a company’s different locations or to establish extranet links between a company and its customers, suppliers, or other business partners.

Wide Area Network (WAN):
A data communications network covering a large geographic area.

Wireless Technologies:
Using radio or infrared transmissions to link devices in a local area network.