1. BCT Section 1.2 Terms
Data Communications, Networks
1. Data Communications The Technology that enables computers to communicate
The transmission of text, numeric, voice or video data from
one machine to another.
2. Sender The computer that is sending the message.
3. Receiver The computer that is sending the message.
4. Channel The media that carries the message. (telephone wire, coaxial
cable, microwave signal, or fiber optic)
5. Protocol The rules that govern the orderly transfer of the data sent.
6. Network When computers are connected to other computers, they can
share information.
7. Local Area Network Computers connected together in a relatively close location such
as in the same building or department.
The data and software for these computers are stored on a central
computer called the file server.
8. Wide Area Network When local area networks are expanded to include several local
area networks within a city, state, region, territory, country,
continent, or the world.
9. Central Processing Unit The microprocessor
10. Arithmetic/Logic Unit performs arithmetic computations and logical operations; by
combining these two operations the ALU can execute complex
tasks.
11. Control Unit s the “boss” and coordinates all of the CPU’s activities.
12. Random Access Memory Memory on the motherboard that is short term; where data,
information, and program instructions are stored temporarily on a
RAM chips
13. Read Only Memory Long Term Memory - Read Only Memory (ROM)
14. Basic Controllers on the motherboard, a device that controls the transfer of data
from the computer to a peripheral device and vice versa.
15. Serial & Parallel Ports Used to connect our peripheral devices to the computer; usually
one serial and one parallel port on a computer.
16. Universal Serial Bus new standard that supports data transfer rates of up to 12 million
bits per second.

2. 17. Motherboard Central to all of this is the motherboard or system board that
mounts into the case, is a circuit board (a thin plate or board that
contains electronic components) that contains many integral
components.
18. ASCII Code American Standard Code for Information Interchange): the most
popular and widely used standardized coding system
19. Byte eight bits or combinations of ones and zeros represent a
character.
20. Megabyte Megabyte or roughly 1 million bytes
Gigabyte Gigabyte or roughly one billion bytes