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All the information you need on understanding wired and wireless networks. ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) - A means of delivering high communication speeds over existing copper telephone lines.
Bandwidth - The volume of data a line or channel can carry every second. Digital bandwidth is measured in bps (bits per second). The greater the bandwidth the quicker information can travel through it. Higher bandwidths are required for specialist applications like multimedia.
BPS - Bits per second. The rate at which one bit can be carried, normally expressed in thousands, Kbps, or millions, Mbps.
Broadband – High speed access to the Internet, generally at speeds of 512Kbps or faster, such as ADSL or Cable Modem. Broadband Connects to your PC via a USB cable or preferably a ethernet cable (RJ-45 cable)
Cable modem – A device allowing high speed access to the Internet over the same wiring used by Cable Television networks.
Cabling - Cables used to link computers together so they form a network and can communicate with each other.
Configuration - The way a computer or piece of software is connected or set up to operate in a particular way
Ethernet - A popular standard for linking computers in a network.
Firewall - Security tools that analyse the communications traffic passing between networks. Rules set up within the firewall decide whether or not to allow specific traffic types to pass between these networks. Firewall's are most commonly used at the point where a private corporate network meets the public Internet
ISP (Internet service provider) - A company like us that provides access to the Internet. All ISP's offer some standard basic services, such as 24-hour Internet access, a unique e-mail address for your home, storage space for your own website and basic software programs for browsing the Internet.
LAN (Local Area Network) - A way of linking computers in one building together so that they can share files, software, hard disks and peripherals such as a printer or scanner.
Networking - A network is nothing more than two or more computers joined together by a cable and software. They can then share information, like a customer database, and peripherals, like printers and CD-ROM writers. They can share software programs, such as work processing packages, and communicate using e-mail.
Network card - A wafer-shaped piece of hardware that enables a computer to be linked up, via cabling, to other machines in the network.
WEP - is a security code or language designed to provide the same level of security as that of a wired network and protect wireless communication from eavesdropping.
Contention - Regarding ADSL - there are two levels of contention on the BTwholesale network at the moment:
50:1 for the home user (Home 500, Home 1000 etc.)
20:1 for the business user (Business 500, 1000, 2000 etc.)
If you take the worst case scenario for the home user then that means you're sharing your 500kbs with 49 other people. If you are all downloading at the same time then you'll get 10kbs - about a quarter of the speed of a normal dial-up analogue modem. In reality, it's unlikely BT will allow this to happen. Despite extremely rapid broadband takeup most users are still able to download and upload at the maximum quoted speed.
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Component Information 
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