MAC Address Definition Stands for "Media Access Control Address," and no, it is not related Apple Macintosh computers. A MAC address is a hardware identification number that uniquely identifies each device on a network. The MAC address is manufactured into every network card, such as an Ethernet card or Wi-Fi card, and therefore cannot be changed. Because there are millions of networkable devices in existence, and each device needs to have a unique MAC address, there must be a very wide range o...

Server Definition A server is a computer that provides data to other computers. It may serve data to systems on a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN) over the Internet. Many types of servers exist, including web servers, mail servers, and file servers. Each type runs software specific to the purpose of the server. For example, a Web server may run Apache HTTP Server or Microsoft IIS, which both provide access to websites over the Internet. A mail server may run a program like ...

SAN Definition Stands for "Storage Area Network." A SAN is a network of storage devices that can be accessed by multiple computers. Each computer on the network can access hard drives in the SAN as if they were local disks connected directly to the computer. This allows individual hard drives to be used by multiple computers, making it easy to share information between different machines. While a single server can provide a shared hard drive to multiple machines, large networks may require more...

NAND Definition NAND is the most common type of flash memory. It is used in several types of storage devices, including SSDs, USB flash drives, and SD cards. NAND memory is non-volatile, meaning it retains stored data even when the power is turned off. What does NAND stand for? Surprisingly, NAND is not an acronym. Instead, the term is short for "NOT AND," a boolean operator and logic gate. The NAND operator produces a FALSE value only if both values of its two inputs are TRUE. It may be contras...

Firmware Definition Firmware is programming that's written to a hardware device's nonvolatile memory. Nonvolatile memory is a form of static random access memory whose contents are saved when a hardware device is turned off or loses its external power source. Firmware, which is added at the time of manufacturing, is used to run user programs on the device and can be thought of as the software that allows hardware to run. Hardware makers use embedded firmware to control the functions of vario...

Bus Definition In a computer or on a network, a bus is a transmission path on which signals are dropped off or picked up at every device attached to the line. Only devices addressed by the signals pay attention to them; the others discard the signals. According to Winn L. Rosch, the term derives from its similarity to autobuses that stop at every town or block to drop off or take on riders In general, the term is used in two somewhat different contexts: (1) A bus is a network topology or ...

SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) SCSI (pronounced SKUH-zee and sometimes colloquially known as "scuzzy"), the Small Computer System Interface, is a set of American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard electronic interfaces that allow personal computers (PCs) to communicate with peripheral hardware such as disk drives, tape drives, CD-ROM drives, printers and scannersfaster and more flexibly than previous parallel data transfer interfaces. SCSI and devices Although not ...

Laser Definition A laser is a coherent and focused beam of photons; coherent, in this context, means that it is all one wavelength, unlike ordinary light which showers on us in many wavelengths. The acronym laser stands for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." Lasers work as a result of resonant effects. The output of a laser is a coherent electromagnetic field. In a coherent beam of electromagnetic energy, all the waves have the same frequency and phase. In a basi...

Load Balancing Definition What is Load Balancing? Load Balancing Definition Explained What is load balancing? A load balancer is a piece of hardware (or virtual hardware) that acts like a reverse proxy to distribute network and/or application traffic across different servers. A load balancer is used to improve the concurrent user capacity and overall reliability of applications. A load balancer helps to improve these by distributing the workload across multiple servers, decreasing the ov...

Cluster Definition 1) In a computer system, a cluster is a group of servers and other resources that act like a single system and enable high availability and, in some cases, load balancing and parallel processing. See clustering. 2) In personal computer storage technology, a cluster is the logical unit of file storage on a hard disk; it's managed by the computer's operating system. Any file stored on a hard disk takes up one or more clusters of storage. A file's clusters can be scattered am...