Term
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Definition
| Connecting multiple computers together. Has the benefits of resource sharing, computational speed up, reliability, communication, and cost effectiveness. |
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Term
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Definition
| Provides an environment in which users, who are aware of the multiplicity of machines, can access remote resources by either logging in to the appropriate remote machine or transferring data from the remote machine to their own machines. |
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Term
| Distributed Operating System |
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Definition
| The users access remote resources in the same way they access local resources. |
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Term
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Definition
| Allowing a remote user to access data as though it were locally available. |
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Term
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Definition
| Transferring computation rather than data. Basically passing jobs to another computer for it to complete for you. Renting a supercomputer is like this. |
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Term
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Definition
| Moving an entire process to another computer. Helps load balancing, computation speedup. If the other computer has special hardware that is suited for the task at hand this can be very helpful, or if it has the data locally available, or has special software. |
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Term
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Definition
| A network where the connected computers are physically close to each other |
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Term
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Definition
| A network where the connected computers are not necessarily physically close to each other. An example is the internet. |
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Term
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Definition
| The path from A to B is specified in advance and does not change unless a hardware failure disables it. Usually the shortest path is chosen. |
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Term
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Definition
| A path from A to B is fixed for the current session. A session could be a single file transfer or a remote-login period. |
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Term
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Definition
| The path from A to B is only chosen when a message is sent. Usually a site sends a message to another site on whatever link is least used at that particular time. |
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Term
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Definition
| The physical layer handles the mechanical and electrical details of the physical transmission of a bit stream. The communicating systems must agree on the electrical representation of a binary 0 and 1. Implemented in the hardware. |
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Term
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Definition
| This layer is responsible for handling frames, fixed-length parts of packets, including any error detection and recovery that occurred in the physical layer. |
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Term
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Definition
| This layer is responsible for providing connections and for routing packets in the communication network, including the addresses of outgoing packets, decoding, the addresses of incoming packets and maintaining routing information for proper response to changing load levels. Routers implement this layer. |
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Term
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Definition
| The transport layer is responsible for low-level access to the network, and for transfer of messages between clients, including partitioning messages into packets, maintaining packet order, controlling flow, and generating physical addresses. |
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Term
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Definition
| UDP is an unreliable connectionless protocol. Provides best-effort message delivery service between applications. Has error detection within the message and port numbers to dispatch messages to the right process on the host. |
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Term
| Transmission Control Protocol |
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Definition
| TCP is a reliable connection-oriented protocol. Has in-order byte stream delivery. Packet boundaries are hidden and message boundaries are not respected. Congestion control, slow down the sender if the network is overwhelmed. |
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