Continental Wireless - Resources - Wireless Networking Glossary


Wireless Networking Glossary

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C

C/I	Carrier to Interference Ratio
CA	Certificate/Certification Authority
Cable Modem	Modulator-demodulator at subscriber locations for conveying data communications on cable TV system, via high-speed Internet connection. Technically, a broadband network bridge. Connects subscriber PC to cable TV line and receives data at ~ 1.5 Mbps, up to 10Megabits per second. This data rate is higher than prevalent 28.8 and 56 Kbps of telephone modems; up-to-128 Kbps of ISDN; and roughly same as data rate available to subscribers of DSL telephone service.
Cable TV	Transmits TV signals, incl. those that originate at over-the-air broadcast stations, to subscribers on a wired network. Also a way to interact with the World Wide Web and other multimedia information and entertainment services. See CATV.
CAP	Competitive Access Provider
CAPEX	Capital Expenditures
CAR	Committed Access Rate. An IP method to achieve higher QoS
Carnivore	US FBI ISP wiretapping box, including a processor and removable hard drive to capture internet sessions (email, web access etc.).
CARS	Community Antenna Relay Service. FCC-designated 12.75-12.95 GHz microwave frequency bands for transporting television signals by cable industry.
CAT1 Wiring	Maximum data rate: up to 1 Mbps (1 MHz) analog voice (POTS) Usual application(s): ISDN Basic Rate Interface, doorbell wiring.See ANSI.
CAT2 Wiring	Maximum data rate: 4 Mbps Usual application(s): IBM Cabling System for Token Ring networks. See ANSI.
CAT3 Wiring	Ordinary telephone twisted pair wiring, connects to RJ11 jacks. Along with CAT5, most popular use. Maximum data rate: 16 Mbps Usual application(s): Voice and data on 10BASE-T Ethernet. See ANSI.
CAT5 Wiring	Ethernet wiring. Along with CAT3, most popular wiring. Maximum data rate: 100 Mbps / 1000 Mbps (4 pair) Usual application(s): 100 Mbps TPDDI / 155 Mbps ATM Gigabit Ethernet.
CATPT	CDMA UIM Card Application Toolkit Protocol Teleservice
CATV	Community Antenna Television. Transmits TV signals, incl. those that originate at over-the-air broadcast stations, to subscribers on a wired network. Origin of cable TV networks.
CBR	Constant Bit Rate. Common form of ATM - QoS categories. Standard for business grade voice services by MSOs. See ABR and VBR.
CCT	Circuit
CD	Collision Detection
CDMA	Code Division Multiple Access. Form of wireless multiplexing, in which data can be sent over multiple frequencies simultaneously, optimizing use of available bandwidth. See Mobile Wireless, TDMA.
Cellular	Short-wave analog or digital telecommunication in which subscriber has wireless connection from mobile telephone to relatively nearby transmitter. Transmitter's span of coverage is called a cell.
CELP	Code Excited Linear Prediction
CENELEC	European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization
CGI	Common Gateway Interface
CHAP	PPP Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol. Use of Radius to authenticate a terminal without sending security data in the clear. Compare with PAP
CIR	Committed Information Rate. Service guarantee from frame relay provider of a certain end-to-end minimum bandwidth.
Circuit-switched Data	Data transmitted over a dedicated (although usually virtual) channel. The destinatioin address is implicitly defined by the (virtual) circuit that is selected
CLEC	Competitive LEC. A new entrant in a market previously limited to one carrier. Some wireless carriers may qualify for this designation
CLI	Command Line Interface
CLLI	Common Language Location Identifier. An ASCII identifier of a telephone switch or calling area.
CLNP	Connectionless Network Protocol
CLNS	Connectionless Network Service
CNAME	Canonical Name. A basic Domain name that may be pointed to by multiple aliases
CO	Central Office
Coax/fiber converter	Device used in pairs to convert a physical-layer signal between Coax and Fiber Optic, extend coax signal.
Coaxial Cable	Copper cable used by CATV companies connecting community antenna with service subscribers. Sometimes used by telephone companies to connect central office to poles located near subscribers. Also widely installed for use in business and corporation Ethernet and other types of LAN. Alternatives are twisted pair and optical fiber.
Co-channel Interference	Interference from other signals using the same radio channel
Codec	Voice coder and decoder. See vocoder and Voice Coder
Contention Level	aka Oversubscription. Usually expressed as a ratio, the bandwidth of an individual user multiplied by the number of users on a link, divided by the bandwidth of that link. Usually measured at aggregation point of broadband gateway. For example: with 400 users, each with 512Kbps access rate, aggregated onto a 4.096Mbps link, contention level is (400 * 512) / 4096 = 50:1.
CPE	Customer Premises Equipment
CRC	Cyclic Redundancy Code (or check). Included in many digital protocols to check for errors in transmitted messages
CRTP	Compressed Real-Time Transport Protocol. Provides compression of RTP, UDP and IP headers.
Cryptosync	Externally-provided synchronizing information for cryptoalgorithms (ciphers) that allows an encryptor at one end to uniquely encrypt each block of content into ciphertext, and yet allows a decryptor at the other end to properly decrypt the ciphertext to yield the original plaintext. Cryptosync often takes the form of the output of a binary counter
CSC	Customer Service Center
CSU	Channel Service Unit. Unit that interfaces between the telephone company and a private network
CTCP	Compressed TCP. Provides compression of TCP and IP headers.
CUG	Closed User Group. Calls are restricted to within the group
CWDM	Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing. Optical technology used to increase bandwidth over existing fiber optic backbones. See DWDM.
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