19216811.liveX5671
User’s Guide
66
LED
Light Emitting Diode
An electronic light-emitting device. The indicator lights
on the front of the device are LEDs.
MAC address
Media Access Control address
The permanent hardware address of a device, assigned
by its manufacturer. MAC addresses are expressed as
six pairs of hex characters, with each pair separated by
colons. For example; NN:NN:NN:NN:NN:NN.
Mask
See network mask.
Mbps
Abbreviation for Megabits per second, or one million bits
per second. Network data rates are often expressed in
Mbps.
NAT
Network Address Translation
A service performed by many routers that translates
your network’s publicly known IP address into a private
IP address for each computer on your LAN. Only your
router and your LAN know these addresses; the outside
world sees only the public IP address when talking to a
computer on your LAN.
Network
A group of computers that are connected together,
allowing them to communicate with each other and
share resources, such as software, files, etc. A network
can be small, such as a LAN, or very large, such as the
Internet.
Network keys
(Also known as encryption keys.) 64-bit and 128-bit
encryption keys used in WEP wireless security
schemes. The keys encrypt data over the WLAN, and
only wireless PCs configured with WEP keys that
correspond to the keys configured on the device can
send/receive encrypted data.
Network mask
A network mask is a sequence of bits applied to an IP
address to select the network ID while ignoring the host
ID. Bits set to 1 mean “select this bit” while bits set to 0
mean “ignore this bit.” For example, if the network mask
255.255.255.0 is applied to the IP address 100.10.50.1,
the network ID is 100.10.50, and the host ID is 1. See
binary, IP address, subnet.
NIC
Network Interface Card
An adapter card that plugs into your computer and
provides the physical interface to your network cabling.
For Ethernet NICs this is typically an RJ-45 connector.
See Ethernet, RJ-45.
Packet
Data transmitted on a network consists of units called
packets. Each packet contains a payload (the data),
plus overhead information such as where it came from
(source address) and where it should go (destination
address).
Ping
Packet Internet (or Inter-Network) Groper
A program used to verify whether the host associated
with an IP address is online. It can also be used to
reveal the IP address for a given domain name.
Port
A physical access point to a device such as a computer
or router, through which data flows into and out of the
device.
PPP
Point-to-Point Protocol
A protocol for serial data transmission that is used to
carry IP (and other protocol) data between your ISP and
your computer. The WAN interface on the device uses
two forms of PPP called PPPoA and PPPoE. See
PPPoA, PPPoE.