Glossary of Network Terms

Network
Computers connected together to share information. Think of a network as a city and the computers as houses within the city. Two types of networks are LAN and WAN.

LAN
Local Area Network; multiple computers connected together to share information. Shared information could be e-mail, files, and printers. Think of a LAN as a neighborhood.

WAN
Wide Area Network; multiple LANs connected together, usually over a great distance, to share information. Think of a WAN as all neighborhoods in a city.

Ethernet
A type of LAN that is recognized as an industry standard.

Internet
A public network of computers and people sharing information. Anyone can access the Internet through an Internet service provider.

Intranet
A private network of computers using web-based technology that lets people within a company share information. Typically this information is confidential to the company and Intranets are not accessible by the general public.

Server
A computer and its software that provides some service for other computers connected to it through a network.

Browser
A software program that provides a way to send and receive information over a network. When configuring PelcoNet to view video through a personal computer, you can use a commercial browser, such as Internet Explorer. When configuring PelcoNet with Pelco's CCTV monitors in a box-to-box configuration, PelcoNet does not use a commercial browser.

IP Address (Static and DHCP)
Identifies a particular computer on a network to other computers. An IP address is similar to your home address. In a neighborhood, each house has a unique address; on a network each computer must have a unique address. There are two types of IP Addresses - static and DHCP.

A static address is where someone physically connects to a computer and defines the IP address for that computer. A static address does not change unless someone physically changes it.

A DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) address is dynamically assigned from a server that contains a pool of addresses. The server leases the computer one of the available addresses for a specified amount of time. Once the specified time has expired, the computer renews the lease or requests a new IP address.

Router
A router is a device that connects two networks. The router reads the destination address of information sent over a network and then sends the information to the next step in its route.

Default Gateway
The IP Address of the Router, needed to send information or video from one network to another.

Bandwidth
A measure of the carrying capacity of information over a network. Video , for example, takes more bandwidth to transmit over a network than text. Bandwidth is an important issue for Network Administrators.

HUB
A device on a network that connects multiple computers together to form a LAN. There are two types of hubs - standard and switching.

A standard hub shares bandwidth across all ports. For example, if you have an eight-port 100 Mps standard hub, then all eight ports share the 100 Mps of bandwidth.

With a switching hub, each port gets a dedicated amount of bandwidth. For example, if you have an eight-port 100 Mps switching hub, then each port gets a full 100 Mps of bandwidth.

Full Duplex
Simultaneous data transmission in both directions.