Bar Mitzvah-BCSM


Bar Mitzvah -BCSM

Bar Mitzvah

One who is now commanded. Under talmudic law until you hit 13 or 12 (bas mitzvah for a girl) you were not commanded to fulfill the commandments of the Torah. The origin for making a party comes from the story in the Talmud about a blind man (the blind were also free from most obligations) who said that he would make a party if he were told that he was obligated to fulfill the commandments .

Barbarella

Barbarella is a 1968 movie starring Jane Fonda. Back then I was a lowly consultant employed by an English bank to help the American president sell his stuffy old English directors on getting into cable TV business. I set up a presentation on media diversity and all the great movies you would be able to see on cable TV. As part of the "presentation" I showed clips from Barbarella. The directors loved the scene of Jane Fonda being attacked by rats and asked me to replay that scene several times for them. (They were not interested in the CATV business, but did like the rats.) The whole scene of the gargantuan boardroom table, the elderly lords, earls and barons among the directors, and the many TV monitors I'd strung around the table for their delicate viewing came back to me in May of 2001 when I read in the New York Times that Jane Fonda was once so embarrassed by the movie that she admitted she must have had her head "up her armpit" when she agreed to do it. For a while Jane Fonda was married to Ted Turner, CNN founder, who gave a billion dollars to the United Nations. Once Ted was allegedly asked what sort of interest he got in his UN charity from audiences he spoke in front off on global issues. He answered , "Most people just want to know what it's like to sleep with Barbarella."

Barbe, Jane

See Jane Barbe.

Barber Pole

The modern barber pole originated in the days when bloodletting was one of the principal duties of the barber. The two spiral ribbons painted around the pole represent the two long bandages, one twisted around the arm before bleeding (blue) and the other used to bind it afterward (red from blood). Originally, when not in use, the pole had both bandages wound around it, so that both might be together when needed. The pole was hung at the door as a sign. But later, for convenience, instead of hanging out the original pole, another one was painted as an imitation and given a permanent place on the outside the shop. This was the beginning of the modern barber pole.

Barcode Rape

When booth bunnies or other trade show fauna grab you by the name tag and swipe the barcode ” and earn a commission ” before even talking to you about the products they offer. See Booth Bunny.

Bare Board

A circuit board without components is called a bare board. A bare board will typically have the correct holes drilled and the correct soldering done in order to accept the components which later will be attached.

Bare Wire

An electrical conductor having no covering or insulation. See also Hard Cable.

Barge-In

Interrupting a call in progress, or interrupting a computer telephony system (say voice mail or automated attendant) while the thing is talking to you.

Barge-Out

Leaving a call in progress without notice.

Barium Ferrite

A type of magnetic particle used in some recording media including floptical diskettes. See also Ferrite, Hard Ferrite and Soft Ferrite.

Barrel

An imaging term . Distortion that swells an image in the middle and narrows it at the top and the bottom.

Barrel Connector

This connector is a cylindrical (barrel-shaped) connector used to splice together two lengths of thick Ethernet coaxial cable.

Barrel Contact

A term in cabling. A barrel contact is an insulation displacement type contact consisting of a slotted tube that cuts the insulation when the wire is inserted.

Barrel Distortion

When a screen is distorted ” with the top, bottom and sides pushing outwards (like a beer barrel) ” the screen is said to be suffering barrel distortion.

BARRNet

Bay Area Regional Research Network. Regional network serving the San Francisco Bay Area. The BARRNet backbone is composed of four University of California campuses (Berkeley, Davis, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco), Stanford University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and NASA Ames Research Center. BARRNet is now part of BBN Planet. See also BBN Planet.

BARS

A Nortel switching term meaning Basic Automatic Route Selection.

Barton

Enos Barton once said he was "disgusted" when told that it would be possible to send conversation along a wire. He later co-founded (with Elisha Gray) the Western Electric Company, which became AT&T's manufacturing subsidiary and was once the largest electrical equipment manufacturer in the U.S. In addition to phones, the company made sewing machines, typewriters, movie sound equipment, radio station gear, radar systems and guided missile parts . See also Graybar.

Base

A component of a transistor which serves as the middle layer of the 3-layer silicon sandwich ”the transistor . The base works as a faucet between the emitter and collector, controlling the current moving through the three layers .

Base Address

The first address in a series of addresses in memory, often used to describe the beginning of a network interface card's I/O space.

Base Amount

A call center term. One of the historical patterns; what the monthly call volume would be if there were no long-term trend or seasonal fluctuation- in other words, the average number of calls per month.

Base Band Audio

The range of frequencies from 0 to 20 kHz.

Base Band Video

The band of frequencies from 0 to 4.2 MHz.

Base Controlled Hand-off

Cell transfers managed by and initiated from the cellular radio network, typical of Advanced Mobile Phone Systems (AMPS).

Base General Premises Cabling Licence

See BCL.

Base Load

In trunk forecasting, an amount of telephone traffic measuring during a certain defined time. See Base Period.

Base Memory

What many people refer to as the first 640 kilobytes of memory in an MS-DOS PC.

Base Period

In trunk forecasting, a time span of consecutive study during which a base load is determined.

Base Schedules

A call center term. A fixed set of pre-existing schedules that you can use as a starting point in scheduling. New schedules created are in addition to the base schedules.

Base Staff

A call center term. The minimum number of people, or "bodies in chairs," required to handle the workload in a given period. The actual required number of staff is always greater than the base staff, because of various human factors such as the need for breaks and time off. Therefore, schedules need to add in extra people to accommodate breaks, absenteeism and other factors that will keep agents from the phones. See Rostered Staff Factor.

Base Station

In cellular technology, a base station is a fixed station used for communicating with mobile stations , most commonly handsets. Each cell in a cellular network requires a base station. It is sometimes used loosely in the standards to mean any land side functionality. See also Mobile Switching Center.

Base Station Controller

In cellular communications, the Base Station Controller is a component of a base station which supervises the functioning and control of multiple Base Transceiver Stations and acts as a small switch.

Base Station Transceiver

In cellular communications, the Base Transceiver Station is a component of a base station which consists of all radio transmission and reception equipment, it provides coverage to a geographic area, and is controlled by a Base Station Controller.

Base Transceiver Station

BTS. The electronic equipment housed in cabinets that together with antennas comprises a PCS facility or "site". The cabinets include an air- conditioning unit, heating unit, electrical supply, telephone hook-up, and back-up power supply.

Base64

A standard algorithm for encoding and decoding non-ASCII data for attachment to an e-mail message, base 64 is the foundation for MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). MIME was standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in RFC 1521 ” Appendix G ” Canonical Encoding Model. Base64 uses a 65-character subset of US-ASCII to encode any file in any format. The 65 characters include all 26 characters of the English language in both upper and lower case; all 10 digits (i.e., 0-9) and the characters "+", "/" and "=". The 65th character is "=," which is used to signify special processing functions. The first 64 characters each represent a unique 6-bit value from 0 (000000) to 63 (111111). The encoding process starts with 24-bit input groups, which are formed by concatenating (linking together) three 8-bit groups. These 24-bit input groups are then treated as 4 concatenated 6-bit groups, each of which is translated into a single character in the base64 alphabet. The resulting "characters" are formed into an output stream of "lines" of no more than 76 characters each. The specific type of content (e.g., audio, image or video) is identified by a content header, which precedes the attached data, which then is transmitted across the IP network, usually the Internet. The receiving device decodes the data by reversing the process. As base64 yields a data stream which is approximately 33% greater than the original content, it is not a compression algorithm. It does, however, comprise a standard means of transmitting non-ASCII data over an IP network, and is unaffected by gateways between networks and systems. UUencode and binhex are alternative, non-standard methods of accomplishing the same thing, although their content may be affected by gateway intervention. See also binhex , MIME and UUencode.

Baseband

A form of modulation in which signals are pulsed directly on the transmission medium without frequency division. Local area networks as a rule, fall into two categories ” broadband and baseband. The simpler, cheaper and less sophisticated of the two is baseband. In baseband LANs, the entire bandwidth (capacity) of the LAN cable is used to transmit a single digital signal. In broadband networks, the capacity of the cable is divided into many channels, which can transmit many simultaneous signals. While a baseband channel can only transmit one signal and that signal is usually digital, a broadband LAN can transmit video, voice and data simultaneously by splitting the signals on that cable using frequency division multiplexing. The electronics of a baseband LAN are simpler than a broadband LAN. The digital signals from the sending devices are put directly onto the cable without modulation of any kind. Only one signal is transmitted at a time. Multiple "simultaneous" transmissions can be achieved by a technique called time division multiplexing (see multiplexing). In contrast, broadband networks (which typically run on coaxial cable) need more complex electronics to decipher and pick off the various signals they transmit. Attached devices on a broadband network require modems to transmit. Attached devices to baseband networks do not.

Baseband LANs typically work with one high speed channel, which all the attached devices ” printers, computers, databases ” share. They share it by using it in turns ” for example, passing a "token" to the next device. That token entitles the device with the token to transmit. IBM's LAN is a token ring passing local area network. Another way of sharing the baseband LAN is that each device, when it is ready to transmit, simply transmits into the channel and waits for a reply. If it doesn't receive a reply, it retransmits. Thus there are two main network or baseband access control schemes ” Token Ring Passing and CSMA/CD. See also CSMA/CD, Broadband, Ethernet and Local Area Networks.

Baseband Modem

A modem which does not apply a complex modulation scheme to the data before transmission, but which applies the digital input (or a simple transformation of it) to the transmission channel. This technique can only be used when a very wide bandwidth is available. It only operates over short distances where signal amplification is not necessary. Sometimes called a limited distance or short-haul modem.

Baseband Signaling

Transmission of a digital or analog signal at its original frequencies, i.e., a signal in its original form, not changed by modulation.

Baseboard

A term used in voice processing/computer telephony to mean a printed circuit board without any daughterboards attached.

Baseboard Raceway

A floor distribution method in which metal or wood channels, containing cables, run along the baseboards of the building. The front panel of the baseboard channel is removable, and outlets may be placed at any point along the channel.

Baseline

  1. The line from which a graph is drawn. The base line is the X axis on vertically oriented graphs, the Y axis on horizontal bar graphs, or the line representing zero if the data contains both positive and negative numbers .

  2. The imaginary line extending through a font and representing the line on which characters are aligned for printing. In conventional, alphanumeric fonts, the baseline is usually defined as the imaginary line touching the bottom of uppercase characters.

Baseline Report

Compares two similar time ranges in a report format. A baseline time range is protected against purge action so that baseline data is available at report time. The baseline time range can be 1 to 30 days.

Baseline Sequential JPEG

The most popular of the JPEG modes which employs the lossy DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) to compress image data as well as lossless processes based on variations of DPCM (Differential Pulse Code Modulation). The "baseline" system represents a minimum capability that must be present in all Sequential JPEG decoder systems. In this mode image components are compressed either individually or in groups. A single scan pass completely codes a component or group of components.

Bash

Bourne-again shell. Interactive UNIX shell based on the traditional Bourne shell, but with increased functionality. See also root account.

BASIC

Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. A programming language written by mathematicians John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. BASIC is an easy language to learn. Not all "Basics" are the same. BASIC is an example of something called a backronym, a word that often is interpreted as an acronym, although it was not so intended. Originally, "BASIC" was just "basic." Then somebody, whose name is lost in the mists of time, decided to make an acronym out of it and coined Beginners All-purpose Symbolie Instruction Code. Designed to be used with minimum of training, BASIC was taught as part of a course required of most Dartmouth students during the 1960s. The Mathematics Department estimated that, at its peak, BASIC was understood by 80 percent of Dartmouth undergrads ” at a time when computers were exotic to most Americans. BASIC laid the foundation for the software that was later used in the introduction of personal computers. See also Acronym.

Basic 911

Basic 911 is the emergency telephone system in the United States that automatically connects 911 callers to a designated answering point (e.g., public service answering point). Call routing is determined by the Central Office from which a call originates. Basic 911 may or may not support Automatic Location Identification and Automatic Number Identification. Basic 911 is in place in most of the United States. Many locales have upgraded to Enhanced 911. See E-911.

Basic Budget Service

An inexpensive local phone service often restricted to people with limited incomes. It may or may not include any outgoing calls. It may include only a few outgoing calls.

Basic Cable Television Service

A tier of cable television service which is available to all subscribers, is specifically identified as "basic" service, includes all television broadcast stations listed on the Must-Carry Station List in the system's PIF, includes all television broadcast stations which the system offers to any subscriber pursuant to any retransmission- consent agreement, includes all public, educational, and government access channels which are designated by franchise for carriage on the basic tier and may include, at the cable operator's option, any other service.

Basic Call

A call between two users that does not require Advanced Intelligent Network Release 1 features (e.g. a POTS call). Definition from Bellcore. See AIN.

Basic Call State Model

BCSM. An Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) term described in ITU-T Standard Recommendation Q.1290. BCSM is a model which describes the call processing steps for basic call control (i.e., a non-intelligent, two-party call). The model is divided into the originating BCSM and terminating BCSM. In total, the BCSM describes the activities of a Service Switching Point (SSP) in establishing, maintaining, and clearing a basic call. This call model comprises Points In Calls (PICs), Detection Points (DPs), and triggers. PICs are the states (i.e., conditions or activities) that a call goes through, and include on-hook (i.e., idle, or available), off-hook (i.e., unavailable, origination attempt, or answer), collecting information, analyzing information, routing, and alerting (i.e., ringing). The DPs represent prospective points for the entry of services as the call progresses from PIC to PIC. Trigger Detection Points (TDPs) are the processes of the SSPs as they check to determine if there are any active triggers. Triggers cause a reaction, or the initiation of a process. If, for example, an originating device goes off-hook to initiate a call, an active trigger causes the SSP to change from a "null state" (i.e., monitoring state) to an "analyzing information state." See also AIN.

Basic Call Vectoring

A PBX feature that processes and routes incoming calls according to a set of commands that can be preprogrammed by the customer to route calls. Calls can be handled differently depending on variables such as the tie of day, the day of week, the number of calls waiting, etc.

Basic Carrier Platform

Common Carrier Platform. A common carriage transmission service coupled with the means by which consumers can access any or all video provides making use of the platform. Video dialtone service at the basic platform level differs from the "channel service " that Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) currently may provide cable television operators in that the Commission will require LECs to provide sufficient transmission capacity to serve multiple video programmers.

Basic Encoding Rules

See BER.

Basic Exchange Telecommunications Radio Service

BETRS. A service that can extend telephone service to rural areas by replacing the local loop with radio communications, sharing the UHF and VHF common carrier and private radio frequencies. See BETRS for a longer explanation.

Basic Mode Link Control

Control of data links by use of the control characters of the 7-bit character set for information processing interchange as given in ISO Standard 646-1983 and ITU-T Recommendation V.3-1972.

Basic Multilingual Plane

See BMP.

Basic Rate

The default rate paid by a telephone subscriber who does not elect any other calling plan. Basic rate can apply to phone service from either a local phone company or a long distance phone company. Basic rate for local service can be a flat monthly rate or a monthly rate plus charges for each call ” on length of call, time of day and distance sensitive charging. A basic rate for long distance or local toll service will be length of call, time of day and distance sensitive charging.

Basic Rate Interface

BRI. Also known as BRA (Basic Rate Access). There are two standard interfaces in ISDN: BRI and PRI. BRI is intended for consumer, SOHO (Small Office Home Office), and small business applications. BRI supports a total signaling rate of 144 Kbps, which is divided into two B (Bearer) channels which run at 64 Kbps, and a D (Delta, or Data) channel which runs at 16 Kbps. The B channels "bear" the actual data payload, i.e., they carry the actual information that you are sending. Such information can be PCM-encoded digital voice, digital video, digital facsimile , or whatever you can squeeze into a 64 Kbps full-duplex channel. The D channel is intended primarily for signaling and control information, including call setup, call maintenance and monitoring, call teardown , Caller ID, and Name ID. As the signaling and control requirements actually are fairly modest, the D channel also will support packet data transfer at rates up to 9.6 Kbps, by special arrangement with the servicing telephone company and at additional cost. The preferred BRI standard is the "U" interface, which uses only two wires and makes use of the 2B1Q line coding technique in the U.S. and the 4B3T technique in Europe. Another BRI standard is the "T" interface which uses four wires. See ISDN for a much fuller explanation. See also 2B1Q, 4B3T, T Interface, and U Interface.

Basic Rate ISDN

BRI. An ISDN service that offers two 64Kbps B channels used for data transfer and one 16Kbps D channel used for signaling and control information. Each B channel can carry a single digital voice call or can be used as a data channel; the B channels can also be combined into a single 128Kbps data channel. See also Basic Rate Interface.

Basic Service

A telephone company service limited to providing local switching and transmission. Basic Service does not include equipment. The term Basic Service is unclear and varies between telephone companies and data communications service providers.

Basic Service Elements

BSEs. An Open Network Architecture term. BSEs are services which value-added companies could get from their phone company. BSEs are optional basic network functions that are not required for an ESP to have a BSA, but when combined with BSEs can offer additional features and services. Most BSEs allow an ESP to offer enhanced services to their customers. BSEs fall into four general categories: Switching, where call routing, call management and processing are required; Signaling, for applications like remote alarm monitoring and meter reading; Transmission, where dedicated bandwidth or bit rate is allocated to a customer application; and Network Management, where a customer is given the ability to monitor network performance and reallocate certain capabilities. The selection of available BSEs is an ongoing process, with new arrangements being developed. ANI, Audiotext "Dial-It" Services, and Message Waiting Notification are all examples of BSEs. See AIN and Open Network Architecture.

Basic Serving Arrangement

BSA. An old term defining the relationship of an enhanced service provider (value added provider) to the phone company providing the line/s. Under ONA (Open Network Architecture), a BSA is the basic interconnection access arrangement which offers a customer access to the public network (i.e. the normal switch phone service) and provides for the selection of available Basic Service Elements. It includes an ESP (Enhanced Service Provider) access link, the features and functions associated with that access link at the central office serving the ESP and/or other offices, and the transport (dedicated or switched) within the network that completes the connection from the ESP to the central office serving its customers or to capabilities associated with the customer's complementary network services. Each component may have a number of categories of network characteristics. Within these categories of network characteristics are alternatives from among which the customer must choose. Examples of BSA components are ESP access link, transport and/or usage. See Open Network Architecture.

Basic Trading Area

Geographic boundaries that segment the country for FCC licensing purposes. BTAs are based on Rand McNally's Commercial Atlas & Marketing Guide. BTA boundaries follow county lines and include the county or counties whose residents make the bulk of their shopping goods purchases in the area. The FCC has used BTAs to license a number of services including broadband and narrowband Personal Communication Services.

Basic Telephony

The lowest level of service in Windows Telephony Services is called Basic Telephony and provides a guaranteed set of functions that corresponds to "Plain Old Telephone Service" (POTS - only make calls and receive calls). See Windows Telephony Services.

Basis Point

A basis point is one hundredth of one percent. For example, you might read, "For the week, yields dropped eight basis points, from 4.66% to 4.58%."

BASR

Buffered Automatic Send/Receive.

Bastion Host

An Internet term. A computer placed outside your firewall to provide public services (such as WWW and FTP) to other Internet sites. This term is sometimes generalized to refer to any host which is critical to the defense of a local network. Generally, a bastion host is running some form of general purpose operating system (e.g., UNIX, VMS, WNT, etc.) rather than a ROM-based or firmware operating system. See also DMZ.

Batch

  1. In data processing, the processing of data accumulated over a period of time. See Batch Processing.

  2. In telecommunications, the accumulation of messages for transmission in a single group.

Batch Change Supplement

BCS. A batch change supplement is a supplement to a batch change in the programmed logic associated with a general purpose computer system, or with a specialized computer or computerized system such as a PBX or router. A "batch change" refers to a change in programmed logic that is made on a batch basis (i.e., in one big bunch of changes). Sometimes, batch changes require additional changes, in the form of supplements.

Batch Processing

There are two basic types of data processing. One is batch processing. Also called deferred time processing and off-line processing. Batch processing occurs where everything relating to one complete job ” such as preparing this week's payroll ” is bunched together and transmitted for processing (locally, in the same building or long distance, across the country), usually by the same computer and under the same application program. Batch processing does not permit interaction between the program and the user once the program has been read (i.e. fed into) the computer. In batch processing with telecommunications (i.e. sending the task to be done over the phone line), network response time is not critical, since no one is sitting in front of a screen waiting for a response. On the other hand, accuracy of communications is very critical, since no one is sitting in front of a screen checking entries and responses.

The second type of processing is called interactive or real time processing. Under this method of processing, a user sends in transactions and awaits a response from the distant computer before continuing. In this case, response time on the data communications facility is critical. Seconds count, especially if a customer is sitting at the other end of a voice call awaiting information on whether there's space on that airline flight, for example. See Batch File.

Bathwater

In England in the 1500's, most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children ” last of all the babies. By then the water had become so dirty you could actually lose someone in it ” hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

Batmobiling

Batmobiling is putting up emotional shields from the retracting armor that covers the batmobile as in "she started talking marriage and he started batmobiling."

Batteries A, B and C

In ancient times, when vacuum tubes were still in use, the A battery (often about 6 volts) heated the filament or cathode to boil off electrons, the B battery (usually several hundred volts), positive with respect to the cathode, sucked the negative electrons to the plate, while the C battery, a few volts negative with respect to the cathode , tended to repel the electrons back toward the cathode. By varying a small signal voltage riding on the C battery, the flow of electrons to the plate could be controlled to generate a much larger voltage.

Battery

Batteries are electrochemical devices that store energy in the form of chemical bonds and convert this energy directly into electricity on demand. In general, a battery consists of a cathode that is the positive pole of a cell, an anode that constitutes the negative pole, and an electrolyte that is the medium through which ions are passed and that carries current internally. A battery's performance is evaluated by many factors, the most important of which are its energy content, the maximum power it can deliver, its cyclability, and its cost. No single battery can be considered to be the "dream machine" that possesses all desirable properties. That is why there are so many different types of batteries.

All telephone systems work on DC (direct current). DC power is what you use to talk on. Often the DC power is called "talking battery." Most key systems and many PBXs plug directly into an AC on the wall, but that AC power is converted by a built-in power supply to the DC power the phone system needs. All central office switches (public exchanges) use DC power also. But they derive it from rechargeable lead acid batteries, which in turn are charged by AC, typically from the local electricity company. These batteries perform several functions:

  1. hey provide the necessary juice to power telephone switches.

  2. hey serve as a filter to smooth out fluctuations in the commercial power and remove the "noise" that power often carries.

  3. hey provide necessary backup power should commercial power stop, as in a " blackout " or should it get weak, as in a "brownout." To sum up, "battery" is the term used to reference the DC power source of a telephone system. Often called "Talking Battery." See also AC, AC Power, Battery Reserve, Central Office Battery and NICAD Battery.

Battery Backup

A battery which provides power to your phone system when the main AC power fails especially during blackouts and brownouts. Hospitals, brokerage companies, airlines and hotel reservation services must have battery backup because of the integral importance of their phone systems to their business.

Battery Eliminator

A device which has a rectifier and (hopefully) a filter. This device will convert AC power into the correct DC voltages necessary to drive a telephone system. Such a battery eliminator, or power supply, should deliver "clean" power, i.e. with little "noise" and of low impedance.

Battery Management

An umbrella term used by various UPS manufacturers to describe a suite of functions related to charging, testing, and maximizing the life of a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) battery. Battery management may include imminent battery failure diagnosis and indication (first introduced in 1989 by APC Corp.), scheduled battery testing, hot swappable user replaceable batteries, high speed battery charging, output regulation to reduce unnecessary battery usage, and/or special battery charging techniques.

Battery Reserve

The capability of the fully charged battery cells to carry the central office power load imposed when commercial power fails and the primary power source (generators/rectifiers) is out of service. Properly described in terms of the number of hours the batteries can furnish operating power for dependent CO apparatus for a demand equal to that on the CO during its busy hour. A busy- hour reserve of eight hours is typical for a telephone office battery plant.

Battle Faxes

A cycle of vitriolic faxes exchanged between clients and lawyers , fighting lovers, etc. "Here's the latest round of battle faxes with my record company." Wired Magazine defined this term.

Baud Rate

A measure of transmission speed over an analog phone line ” i.e. a common POTS line. (POTS stands for Plain Old Telephone Service). Imagine that you want to send digital information (say from your computer) over a POTS phone line. You buy a modem. A modem is a device for converting digital on-off signals, which your computer speaks, to the analog, sine-wave signals your phone line "speaks." For your modem to put data on your phone line means it must send out an analog sine wave (called the carrier signal) and change that carrier signal in concert with the data it's sending. Baud rate measures the number of changes per second in that analog sine wave signal. According to Bell Labs, the most changes you can get out of a 3 KHz (3000 cycles per second) voice channel (which is what all voice channels are) is theoretically twice the bandwidth, or 6,000 baud.

Baud rate is often confused with bits per second, which is a transfer rate measuring exactly how many bits of computer data per second can be sent over a telephone line. You can get more data per second ” i.e. more bits per second ” on a voice channel than you can change the signal. You do this through the magic of coding techniques, such as phase shift keying. Advanced coding techniques mean that more than one bit can be placed on a baud, so to speak. To take a common example, a 9,600 bit per second modem is, in reality, a 2,400 baud modem with advanced coding such that four bits are impressed on each baud. The continuing development of newer and newer modems point to increasingly advanced coding techniques, bringing higher and higher bit per second speeds. My latest modem, for example, is 56,000 bits per second. Baud is named after Jean-Maurice Emile Baudot. See Baudot Code.

Baudot Code

The code set used in Telex Transmission, named for French telegrapher Jean-Maurice Emile Baudot (1845-1903) who invented it. Also known by the ITU approved name, International Telegraph Alphabet 2. The Baudot code has only five bits, meaning that only 32 separate and distinct characters are possible from this code, i.e. 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 equals 32. By having one character called Letters (usually marked LTRS on the keyboard) which means "all the characters that follow are alphabetic characters," and having one other key called Figures ( marked FIGS), meaning "all characters that follow are numerals or punctuation characters," the Baudot character set can represent 52 (26 x 2) printing characters. The characters "space," "carriage return," "line feed" and "blank" mean the same in either FIGS or LTRS. TDD devices (Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf) use the Baudot method of communications to communicate with distant TDD devices over phone lines. See also ASCII, EBCDIC, Morse Code and Unicode, which are other ways of encoding characters into the ones or zeros needed by computers.

Bay

A telephone industry term for the space between the vertical panels or mounting strips ("rails") of the rack. One rack may contain several bays. A bay is another place you put equipment.

Bayesian Inference

The theoretical underpinnings can be traced back to Thomas Bayes, an 18th century English cleric whose works on mathematical probability were not published until after his death ( "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London" 1763). Bayes' work centred on calculating the probabilistic relationship between multiple variables and determining the extent to which one variable impacts on another. A typical problem is to judge how relevant a document is to a given query or agent profile. Bayesian theory aids in this calculation by relating this judgement to details that we already know,such as the model of an agent. More formally , the resulting, "a posteriori," which is applicable in judging relevance can be given as a function of the known "a priori " models and likelihood theories . Adaptive probabilistic concept modelling (APCM) analyses correlation between features found in documents relevant to an agent profile, finding new concepts and documents. Concepts important to sets of documents can be determined, allowing new documents to be accurately classified . This sort of advanced mathematical concepts are used in call centers to improve customer service.

BBG

Basic Business Group.

BBG-I

ISDN Basic Business Group.

BBIN

BroadBand Intelligent Network. See Broadband and IN.

BBN Communications

BBN Communications was the implementer and operator of the ARPANET, the forerunner of today's Internet. It was also responsible for a number of networking firsts: the first packet switch, the first router, and the first person-to-person network email. BBN Communications also designed, built and operated the Defense Data Network.

BBS

Bulletin Board System. Another term for an electronic bulletin board. Typically a PC, modem/s and communications bulletin board software attached to the end of one or more phone lines. Callers can call the BBS, read messages and download public domain software. The person who operates a BBS is called a system operator, commonly shortened to SYSOP (pronounced "sis-op"). See also Electronic Bulletin Board.

BBUL

Bbumpless Build-up Layer Packaging. Intel's new technology that helps build thinner, faster processors more cheaply. The technique will debut in 2006 or 2007 and semiconductor chips based on it would be thinner than a dime.

Bc

Committed Burst Size. A Frame Relay term. The maximum amount of data bits that a frame relay network agrees to transfer under normal conditions during period of time, or Measurement Interval (T). Above the Bc, the data bits can be marked DE (Discard Eligible), indicating to the various network devices that those bits are eligible to be discarded should the network suffer congestion. See also Committed Information Rate.

BCC

  1. Bellcore Client Company. What Bellcore called its original owners ” the seven regional Bell operating companies and their operating phone company subsidiaries. This definition is something of a historical footnote, as Bellcore was sold to SAIC and there no longer are seven RBOCs and Bellcore is now called Telcordia Technologies. See Bellcore and RBOC.

  2. Block Check Character. A control character appended to blocks in character-oriented protocols and used for figuring if the block was received in error. BCC is especially used in longitudinal and cyclic redundancy checking. As a packet (or in IBM jargon, a frame) is assembled for transmission, the bits are passed through an algorithm to come up with a BCC. When the packet is received at the other end, the receiving computer also runs the same algorithm. Both machines should come up with the same BCC. If they do, the transmission is correct and the receiving computer sends an ACK ” a positive acknowledgement. If they don't, an error has occurred during transmission, and they don't have the same bits in the packet. The receiver transmits a signal (a NAK, for negative acknowledgement ) that an error has occurred, and the sender retransmits the packet. This process goes on until the BCC checks.

  3. Blind Carbon Copy.

BCCH

BroadCast CHannel. A wireless term for the logical channel used in certain cellular networks to broadcast signaling and control information to all cellular phones. BCCH is a logical channel of the FDCCH (Forward Digital Control CHannel), defined by IS-136 for use in digital cellular networks employing TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access). The BCCH comprises the E-BCCH, F-BCCH and S-BCCH. The E-BCCH (Extended-BCCH) contains information which is not of high priority, such as the identification of neighboring cell sites. The F-BCCH (Fast-BCCH) contains critical information which must be transmitted immediately; examples include system information and registration parameters. S-BCCH (System message-BCCH), which has not yet been fully defined, will contain messages for system broadcast. See also IS-136 and TDMA.

BCD

Binary Coded Decimal. A system of binary numbers where each digit of a number is represented by four bits. See BINARY. In ATM, binary code decimal is a form of coding of each octet within a cell where each bit has one of two allowable states, 1 or 0.

BCH

Bose, Chaudhuri and Hocquenghem error correction code. Named after the three guys who invented it.

BCHO

Base-Controlled Hand-Off. A cellular radio term.

BCL

Base General Premises Cabling Licence. In Australia, BCL is the license that allows cablers to perform building cabling. It replaced the General Premises Cabling Licence (GPCL).

BCM

  1. Bit Compression Multiplexer.

  2. Basic Call Model (a term from the Bellcore discussion of Advanced Intelligent Networks). See AIN.

BCOB

An ATM term. Broadband Connection Oriented Bearer: Information in the SETUP message that indicates the type of service requested by the calling user.

BCOB-A

Bearer Class A: Indicated by ATM end user in SETUP message for connection- oriented, constant bit rate service. The network may perform internetworking based on AAL information element (IE).

BCOB-C

Bearer Class C: Indicated by ATM end user in SETUP message for connection- oriented, variable bit rate service. The network may perform internetworking based on AAL information element (IE).

BCOB-X

Bearer Class X: Indicated by ATM end user in SETUP message for ATM transport service where AAL, traffic type and timing requirements are transparent to the network.

BCP

See Best Current Practice.

BCS

Batch Change Supplement. A batch change supplement is a supplement to a batch change in the programmed logic associated with a general purpose computer system, or with a specialized computer or computerized system such as a PBX or router. A "batch change" refers to a change in programmed logic that is made on a batch basis (i.e., in one big bunch of changes). Sometimes, batch changes require additional changes, in the form of supplements.

BCSM

See Basic Call State Model.




Newton[ap]s Telecom Dictionary
Newton[ap]s Telecom Dictionary
ISBN: 979387345
EAN: N/A
Year: 2004
Pages: 133

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