Chapter 1. Basic Concepts

This chapter defines basic telecommunications terms. Terms such as analog, digital and bandwidth are used in the context of services that touch the everyday work experiences of professionals. Understanding fundamental terminology creates a basis for learning about advanced telecommunications services. A grasp of such fundamental concepts as digital, analog, bandwidth, compression, protocols, codes and bits provides a basis for comprehending technologies such as high speed digital services, convergence and wireless networks. These technologies, in addition to the Internet, are changing the way Americans do business, spawning new telecommunications services and creating a smaller, linked, worldwide community.

Protocols are an important ingredient in enabling computers to communicate with each other. Protocols may be likened to etiquette between computers. Just as etiquette spells out who shakes hands first, how people greet each other and rules for how guests should leave parties, protocols spell out the order in which computers take turns transmitting and how long computers should wait before they terminate a transmission. Protocols handle functions such as error correction, error detection and file transmissions in a common manner so that computers can "talk" to each other. A computer sends data to another computer using a protocol such as IPX, Novell NetWare's protocol designed for communications between local area networks (LANs).