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Glossary of broadband terminology: W to Z, 0 to 9

Wide Area Network

Private network facilities, usually offered by public telephone companies but increasingly available from alternative access providers (sometimes called Competitive Access Providers, or CAPs), that link business network nodes.

xDSL

A generic term for the suite of DSL services, where the "x" can be replaced with any of a number of letters, including "A," "H," "M," "RA,""S," and "V." See also Asymmetrical DSL, High Bit Rate DSL, Moderate Speed DSL, Rate Adaptive DSL, Symmetric DSL, and Very High Data Rate DSL.

X.21

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X.25

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Y

-

Z Modem

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1000Base-T

A 1000 Mbps LAN that maintains backward compatibility with 10 Base-T networks running at 10 Mbps. Commonly know simply as gigabit. Needs Cat5e or Cat6 cabling. Unsurprisingly a new 10Gb is lined up.

100Base-T

A 100 Mbps LAN that maintains backward compatibility with 10 Base-T networks running at 10 Mbps. Competitor to 100VG AnyLAN.

10Base-T

A 10 Mbps Ethernet LAN which runs over twisted pair wiring. This network interface was originally designed to run over ordinary twisted pair (phone wiring) but is predominantly used with Category 3 or 5 cabling.

2B1Q

Modulation format used by ISDN.

802.6

One of the 800 series of standards ratified by the IEEE, this specification details MANs that rely on DQDB, a connectionless packet-switched protocol.

802.11a / b / g / i

Wireless standards, with 11b at 11Mb/s and 11a / 11g at 55Mb/s. I'll go into this further after I update the site .