Glossary
A
- @home
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A now-defunct company founded by TCI, Comcast, and Cox Communications to share the risks of developing cable modem service in markets across the United States. @home quickly grew to be the nation’s largest broadband provider, and in 1999, it acquired the Excite portal for $6.7 billion. At the same time, however, @home’s founders began retracting their investments to form their own (more profitable) broadband networks. This strained @home’s finances, and in late 2001, the company was forced to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Its existing networks were quickly taken over by AT&T Broadband, and final operations under the @home name ceased by February 2002.
- adapter
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A hardware or software device that forms a networking connection.
For example, an NIC is a hardware adapter that connects a computer to a local network, and a dialup adapter is a piece of software that connects a computer to a remote network (such as an ISP). In Windows, adapters are indicated by a green circuit board icon.
- ADSL
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Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. The most common flavor of DSL, in which upstream speed is lower than downstream speed. Since the average Internet user downloads much more than they upload, this type of service is usually sufficient.
- autosensing
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The ability of a device to automatically determine whether it should run at 10Base-T or 100Base-T speed. Also referred to as 10/100. This ability is useful for networks that include some devices using each standard.