Cable: Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6A ; What's the Difference?
This article describes the different twisted pair cable types, Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6A, their construction and application. More ...
ISP Multihoming Explained
Multihoming is essentially a method whereby a company can connect to more than one ISP at the same time. The concept was born out of the need to protect Internet access in the event of either an ISP link failure or an ISP internal failure. More ...
Frame Relay WAN Protocol
Frame Relay is WAN protocol and operates for LAN internetworking at data link layers. It is a packet-switched technology designed for swift digital transmission of data. Data integrity is not guaranteed and packets are discarded during network congestion. More ...
What Are Pseudo-Wires?
Pseudo-wire is a mechanism used in networking and telecommunications to emulate various services using packet switched networks with technologies such as Ethernet, MPLS (Multi Protocol Labelled Switching) and IP (Internet Protocol). More ...
Hubs, Switches and Routers - What's the Difference?
The terms "hub", "switch", and "router" are often used interchangeably and - in fact, the devices are quite different. Hubs are used to simply interconnect individual computers. Switches do the same more efficiently. However, routers interconnect different networks (as opposed to individual machines). More ...
Beginners Guide to Fiber Optic Bit Error Ratio (BER) Measurement
Bit error ratio (BER) measurement is the fundamental measurement of the quality of the fiber optic communication system. It measures the system's probability that transmitted bits will be correctly received as logic ones and zeros. More ...
How to Set up a Private Network
A private network is one which does not connect directly to the internet, but does allow you to connect to other computers that are on the same physical network. More ...
What is an Ethernet Switch?
An Ethernet switch is a networking device that is able to interrogate the data within the Ethernet Frames to provide forwarding and filtering and loop avoidance. More ...
What Are Fiber Optic Attenuators?
A fiber optic attenuator, also called an optical attenuator, simulates the loss the would be caused by a long length of fiber. For a fiber optic receiver, too much light can overload it and degrade the bit error ratio. More ...
Ethernet Bridges
Unlike a hub, which blindly forwards received bits, a bridge makes intelligent forwarding decisions based on the destination MAC address in a frame. More ...
VPN (Virtual Private Network) headend or Concentrator
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) uses 'tunneling', a process by which secure, encrypted packets are sent over a publicly shared network. More ...
How Do Fiber Optic Couplers Work and How are They Made?
Fiber optic couplers are needed for tapping (monitoring the signal quality) or more complex telecommunication systems which require more than simple point-to-point connections, such as ring architectures, bus architectures and star architectures. More ...
Proxy Servers
With a proxy server, instead of connecting directly to a server that can fulfill a requested resource, such as a file or web page, the client directs the request to the proxy server, which evaluates the request and performs the required network transactions. More ...
