Glossary - GE MobileLink CB-1000 Installation And Troubleshooting Manual

Glossary

10baseT A variant of Ethernet which allows stations to be attached via twisted pair cable.
802.11b (also referred to as 802.11 High Rate or Wi-Fi). An extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANs and provides
11 Mbps transmission (with a fallback to 5.5, 2 and 1 Mbps) in the 2.4 GHz band. 802.11b uses only DSSS.
802.11b was a 1999 ratification to the original 802.11 standard, allowing wireless functionality comparable to
Ethernet.
ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange. The basis of character sets used in almost all present-
day computers. US-ASCII uses only the lower seven bits (character points 0 to 127) to convey some control
codes, space, numbers, most basic punctuation, and unaccented letters a-z and A-Z.
BNC Bayonet Navy Connector. A connector for coaxial cable such as that used for some video connections and
RG58 "cheapernet" connections. A BNC connector has a bayonet-type shell with two small knobs on the female
connector which lock into spiral slots in the male connector when it is twisted on.
BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying. A digital frequency modulation technique used for sending data over a coaxial cable
network. This type of modulation is less efficient--but also less susceptible to noise--than similar modulation
techniques, such as QPSK and 64QAM.
DSSS Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum. One of two types of spread spectrum radio, the other being frequency-
hopping spread spectrum. DSSS is a transmission technology used in local area wireless network transmissions
where a data signal at the sending station is combined with a higher data rate bit sequence, or chipping code, that
divides the user data according to a spreading ratio. The chipping code is a redundant bit pattern for each bit that
is transmitted, which increases the signal's resistance to interference. If one or more bits in the pattern are
damaged during transmission, the original data can be recovered due to the redundancy of the transmission.
EIRP Effective Isotropic Radiated Power. The EIRP is the apparent power transmitted towards the receiver, if it is
assumed that the signal is radiated equally in all directions, such as a spherical wave emanating from a point
source.
ESSID Extended Service Set Identifier (IEEE 802.11 wireless networking)
FCC Federal Communications Commission. An independent United States government agency, directly responsible
to Congress. The FCC is charged with regulating all non-Federal Government use of the radio spectrum (including
radio and television broadcasting), and all interstate telecommunications (wire, satellite and cable) as well as all
international communications that originate or terminate in the United States. The FCC took over wire
communication regulation from the Interstate Commerce Commission.
IP Address The 32-bit host address defined by the Internet Protocol in STD 5, RFC 791. It is usually represented in dotted
decimal notation.
Mbps megabits per second. Millions of bits per second. A unit of data rate. 1 Mb/s = 1,000,000 bits per second
QPSK Quadrature Phase-Shift Keying. A digital frequency modulation technique used for sending data over coaxial
cable networks. Since it's both easy to implement and fairly resistant to noise, QPSK is used primarily for sending
data from the cable subscriber upstream to the Internet.
SSID Service Set Identifier. A 32-character unique identifier attached to the header of packets sent over a WLAN that
acts as a password when a mobile device tries to connect to the BSS. The SSID differentiates one WLAN from
another, so all access points and all devices attempting to connect to a specific WLAN must use the same SSID.
A device will not be permitted to join the BSS unless it can provide the unique SSID. Because an SSID can be
sniffed in plain text from a packet it does not supply any security to the network.
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Glossary
MobileLink
2002783-060
Revision D