ADSL

ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) is a technology for transmitting digital information at a high bandwidth on existing phone lines to homes and businesses. Unlike regular dialup phone service, ADSL provides continously-available, "always on" connection. ADSL is generally offered at downstream data rates from 512 Kbps to about 6 Mbps


Algorithm

Algorithm is a formula or set of steps for solving a particular problem. A computer program can be viewed as an elaborate algorithm.ARP


ARP

ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) is a protocol for mapping an Internet Protocol address (IP address) to a physical machine address that is recognized in the local network. The physical machine address is also known as a Media Access Control or MAC address.

How ARP works

When an incoming packet destined for a host machine on a particular local area network arrives at a gateway, the gateway asks the ARP program to find a physical host or MAC address that matches the IP address. The ARP program looks in the ARP cache and, if it finds the address, provides it so that the packet can be converted to the right packet length and format and sent to the machine. If no entry is found for the IP address, ARP broadcasts a request packet in a special format to all the machines on the LAN to see if one machine knows that it has that IP address associated with it. A machine that recognizes the IP address as its own returns a reply so indicating. ARP updates the ARP cache for future reference and then sends the packet to the MAC address that replied. For more information, please refer to this page
http://www.networksorcery.com/enp/protocol/arp.htm


Asynchronous

The term "asynchronous" is usually used to describe communications in which data can be transmitted intermittently rather than in a steady stream. For example, a telephone conversation is asynchronous because both parties can talk whenever they like. If the communication were synchronous, each party would be required to wait a specified interval before speaking.

The difficulty with asynchronous communications is that the receiver must have a way to distinguish between valid data and noise. In computer communications, this is usually accomplished through a special start bit and stop bit at the beginning and end of each piece of data. For this reason, asynchronous communication is sometimes called start-stop transmission.