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Telecommunications/Technology Glossary Acronyms Abbreviations Dictionary
A-D E-K L-Z
- LAN - Local Area Network
- LATA - Local Access Transport Area - is a U.S.A. geographic area that includes a local calling area plus a regional calling area. LATAs roughly correspond to metropolitan areas and thus can span across more than one state. However, most LATAs are within a state with each state containing one or more LATAs.
- LCA - Local Calling Area
- LCR - Lowest Cost Routing
- LNP - Local Number Portability - allows phone numbers to be ported (moved) from one carrier to another, for example from a landline phone to a cell phone or a VoIP phone.
- LPN - Low-Power Network - a type of wireless telecommunication wide area network designed to allow long-range communications at a low bit rate among things (connected objects), such as sensors operated on a battery.
- LPWAN - Low-Power Wide-Area Network - a type of wireless telecommunication wide area network designed to allow long-range communications at a low bit rate among things (connected objects), such as sensors operated on a battery.
- LTE - Long Term Evolution - a 4G wireless technology using flat IP architecture developed within the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards organization. It has lower latency than the 3G technology. Verizon Wireless has decided to use LTE in it's future plans to complement it's existing CDMA network.
- M2M - Machine-to-machine, for example cellular M2M communications. Typical applications are utility meter reading and vehicle tracking and diagnostics. (see next item)
- M2M - Month to Month - normally large Telecommunications contracts start with a term between 1 and 3 years, sometimes 5 years; once that initial term is up, a contract may be renewed or it may go to a M2M arrangement. (see previous item)
- MA - Master Agreement
- MaaS - Mobility as a Service
- MARC - Minimum Annual Revenue Commitment
- MBE - Mid-Band Ethernet
- MDaaS - Managed Device as a Service (see next item)
- MDaaS - Mobile Device as a Service (see previous item)
- MDM - Mobil Device Management
- MDR - Managed THreat ThDetection and Response
- MDU - Multi-Dwelling Unit - apartment building.
- MEF - MetroEthernet Forum
- MEN - Metro Ethernet network
- MFA - Multi-Factor Authentication - use of more than a single factor for logging into an account; e.g., use of a password and a code sent by a text message or a phone call.
- MIMO - Multiple Input Multiple Output - a method for increasing the capacity of radio channels by using multiple antennas.
- ML - Machine Learning
- MLPPP - MultiLink Point-to-Point Protocol
- MMDS - Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service aka Microwave Multipoint Distribution Services - A digital line of sight wireless broadcasting and communications system that works in the 2.1-2.7 GHz range. It is licensed by the FCC and can be used to transmit data and phone services over 30 mile distances.
- MMF - Multi Mode Fiber.
- MMR - MeetMe Room - room at a Collocation Center in which carriers connect to ports that connect to customers rack equipment. MMRs are required because carriers have no access into the room where the customer racks are located.
- MMUC - Minimum Monthly Usage Commitment
- MNC - A multinational company (or multinational corporation) is an organization that controls services and/or the production of goods in at least two countries. Some say that for a company to be considered an MNC, it must derive at least 25% of its revenue from operations outside of its home country.
- MNO - Mobile Network Operator
- MNP - Mobile Number Portability
- MoCA - Multimedia over Coax Alliance
- MOS - Mean Opinion Score - A number between 1 and 5 rating the quality of a voice service or connection where 5 is the excellent quality, 4 is good, 3 is fair, 2 is poor, and between 1 and 2 is completely unuseable. A good POTS or land line connection is in the 4 to 4.5 range. These days respectable VoIP services are between about 3.9 and 4.4.
- mou - memorandum of understanding
- MOU - Minutes of Use - many providers of phone service offer packages with various numbers of MOUs included
- MPLS - Multi-protocol Label Switching - IETF standard used to prioritize traffic to avoid network congestion or failures. Today, QoS doesn't carry over from one network to another. Once MPLS is widely deployed, it promises to not only accomplish this QoS carryover but to introduce advanced QOS. MPLS offers the ability to integrate voice, video and data across a common platform giving appropriate priority to each using CoS. It can replace ATM, Frame Relay, and Hosted VPN offerings.
- MPOE - Minimum Point of Entry - Main Phone Closet or Box - typically in the basement or on the first floor.
- MRC - Monthly Recurring Cost
- MRR - Monthly Recurring Revenue
- MSA - Metropolitan Service Area
- MSAP - Multi-Service Access Platform.
- MSO - Multiple System Operators - A cable company that operates more than one cable system; i.e., that operates in more than one community. Generally MSO is used to describe large cable companies that operate in many communities.
- MSP - Managed Service Provider
- MSPP - Multiservice Provisioning Platform.
- MSS - Managed Security Services
- MSSP - Managed Security Service Provider
- MTNS - MultiTransport Network Service
- MTTC - Mean Time to Contain a cyberattack
- MTTI - Mean Time to Identify a cyberattack
- MTTR - Mean Time to Repair OR Mean Time to Restore (note that these definitions are very different so it's important to know which definition the vendor is using)
- MVNA - Mobile Virtual Network Aggregator
- MVNO - Mobile Virtual Network Operator
- MX - Mail Exchange
- NaaS - Network as a Service
- NAC - Network Access Control - Network Access Control is used to secure users and endpoints to a local network.
- NAT - Network Address Translation
- NCC - National Cybersecurity Center
- NFAS - Non-Facilities Associated Signaling
- NFC - Near Field Communication - a wireless radio communications standard typically used with NFC tags to track items including item descriptive info that can be read using a smartphone or other NFC-capable device. NFC is a subset of RFID technology that is considered to be more secure than general RFID since most NFC devices must be no more than a few centimeters apart. NFC allows 2-way communication; e.g., between smartphones.
- NFT - Non-Fungible Token - a unit of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain. The blockchain is a decentralized ledger that traces the ownership and transaction history of each NFT ensuring it's uniqueness. NFTs are virtual tokens that can represent such diverse items as photos, music, videos, sports cards, video game memorabilia, StarTrek memorabilia, digital artwork, and other types of digital files.
- NFV - Network Functions Virtualization - the move of network functions from dedicated hardware onto servers. In other words, NFV allows the functions of hardware to be moved to software running on generic servers; e.g., firewalls, gateways, routers, SBCs.
- NG - Next Generation
- NGFW - Next Generation Firewall
- NGN - Next-Generation Networks
- NIC - Network Interface Card - Card used in a PC to connect to a network.
- NIU - Network Interface Unit
- NLP - Natural Language Processing - processing or interpretation of language by computers.
- NLU - Natural Language Understanding
- NNI - Network-to-Network Interface
- NRC - Non-Recurring Cost - one time cost
- NS - Name Server
- NTA - Network Traffic Analysis
- NTU - Network Terminating Unit or Network Termination Unit - A device provided by a carrier which connects to CPE and interfaces it with the PSTN.
- OCN - Operating Carrier Number
- ODIN - Open Datacenter with an Interoperable Network
- OFDMA- Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
- OIC - Open Interconnect Consortium - Group of firms, including Intel, Samsung, Dell and Broadcom, that has a goal of defining a framework and standards for the emerging Internet of Things to provide secure and reliable device discovery and connectivity across multiple OSs and platforms.
- OLPC - One Laptop Per Child - project whose goal is to bring inexpensive computing resources to children in the developing world.
- ONT - Optical Network Terminal - terminal that supports a number of customers.
- OSC - Organization Seeking Certification - DoD terminology
- OSI - Open System Interconnection
- OSPF - Open Shortest Path First
- OTT - Over the Top - refers to services provided by a provider other than the provider of the circuit(s) on which the services are riding. For example, some providers will sell you Hosted PBX, Hosted Contact Center, and/or SD-WAN services even though they are not also selling you the circuit(s) for these services.
- PAE - Performance Assured Ethernet
- PAM - Privileged Access Management
- PBB-TE- Provider Backbone Bridging - Traffic Engineering - Emerging IEEE standard for Ethernet transport which provides enhancements known as PBT.
- PBT - Provider Backbone Transport - Ethernet enhancement which can allow control of data paths in a large carrier network.
- PBX - Private Branch Exchange
- PCI-DSS - Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
- PIC - Presubscribed Interexchange Carrier - The Interexchange Carrier to which calls are routed by default sometimes called the Preferred Interexchange Carrier.
- PKI - Public-Key Infrastructure - the technology behind digital certificates.
- PL - Private line
- PMS - Practice Management System
- PNG - Portable Network Graphics - graphics format offering advantages of JPEGs (such as true-color support) and GIFs (such as lossless compression) plus new capabilities such as varying degrees of transparency.
- POC - Proof of Concept (see next item)
- POC - Proof of Coverage (see previous item)
- PON - Passive optical network
- POP - Point of Presence
- PoS - Packet over Sonet
- POTS - Plain Old Telephone System (or Service) - The telephone system that runs on the PSTN.
- P-OTS - Packet Optical Transport System - combines the functionality of SONET/SDH, Ethernet and WDM/ROADM
- POV - Proof of Value
- PPP - Point to Point Protocol
- PS/ALI-Private Switch/Automatic Location Identification - ability to identify the phone within an organization from which a 911 call was placed.
- PSAPs - Public safety answering points - Points at which 9-1-1 calls are answered.
- PSAT - Public Service Access Point
- PSK - Pre-Specified Keys
- PSTN - Public Switched Telephone Network -the international telephone system based on copper wires carrying analog voice data on circuit-switched telephone networks. Also, known as the POTS.
- PtP - Point-to-Point - usually refers to a dedicated circuit run between two points.
- PTT - Push-to-talk
- PVC - Permanent Virtual Circuit
- PVR - Personal Video Recorder
- QA - Quality Analytics
- QAM - Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
- QM - Quality Management
- QoE - Quality of Experience
- QoS - Quality of Service
- RaaS - Ransomeware-as-a-Service
- Radius - Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service - a network protocol that uses centralized authentication, authorization, and accounting for requests over a network
- RAN - Radio Access Network
- RBAC - Role Based Access Control
- RBI - Remote Browser isolation
- RBOC - Regional Bell Operating Company
- RCF - Remote Call Forwarding
- RDP - Remote Desktop Protocol
- RFID - Radio frequency identification - RFID tags use 1-way communication with a range up to 100 meters.
- RFO - Reason for Outage
- RFoG - Radio frequency over glass - deep-fiber network design in which a single mono-mode fiber PON replaces the coax portion of a HFC network.
- RNIE - Redirected Number Information Event - When forwarding a call, a PBX that supports RNIE can pass Caller ID info from an incoming call along with the call
- ROE - Right of Entry - agreement between carrier and building owner/management re circuit entry into the building
- RPA - Robotic Process Automation
- RSS - Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication - all of these refer to the same thing - RSS is a commonly accepted XML standard platform, a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites. With RSS a webmaster can instantly deliver information
- RTAV - Real Time Audio and Video
- RTCP - Real Time Transport Control Protocol
- RTP - Real Time Protocol
- SaaS - Software as a Service
- SASE - Secure Access Service Edge - a network framework featuring a combined set of Security solutions, usually tied together with SDWAN.
- SBC - Session Border Control (see next item)
- SBC - Session Border Controller - SBCs offer security and quality in the deployment of next generation communications services and architectures such as FMC, IMS and VoIP. (see previous item)
- SDH - Synchronous Digital Hierarchy - SDH is a standard for synchronous data transmission of multiple data streams over optical fiber. While SONET is used in North America for this purpose, SDH is used in most of the world.
- SDN - Software defined networking - network intelligence and state are logically centralized.
- SDP - Software-Defined Perimeter - original name of the ZTNA model.
- SDR - single-data rate - normally applied to DRAM
- SDRAM - synchronous DRAM
- SDSL - Symmetric Digital iSubscriber Line - the download and upload speeds (bandwidths) are the same as opposed to ADSL.
- SD-WAN-Software Defined - Wide Area Network
- SEM - Search Engine Marketing - the use of paid ads to appear high in search results.
- SEO - Search Engine Optimization - optimizing the design of web sites so that search engines find your pages and place them high in search results.
- SHAKEN - Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs
- SI - System Integrator
- SIEM - Security Information & Event Management
- SIM - Subscriber Identity Module - Removable SIM cards in cell phones allow phones to be instantly activated, interchanged, swapped out and upgraded simply by inserting or removing a SIM card. In the USA, only GSM cell phones use SIM cards.
- SIP - Session Initiation Protocol - protocol used for most Internet Telephony solutions
- SLA - Service level agreement
- SMF - Single Mode Fiber.
- SMN - Simple Message Notification
- SMS - Short Message Service - text messaging - sending short messages to and from mobile phones.
- SMS/800- 800 Service Management System - the operations support system used to maintain North American toll free call processing records, toll free number availability, and toll free number reservation status.
- SOAP - simple object Access protocol
- SOC - Security Operations Center
- SONET - Synchronous Optical Network - SONET is a TDM protocol standard for synchronous data transmission of multiple data streams over optical fiber except for low transmission rates. It is used in North America while SDH is used instead in most of the world.
- SOX - Sarbanes-Oxley Act - an USA Federal law that places compliance requirements on companies especially in the financial area
- SPA - Single Packet Authentication
- SPU - Security Processing Unit
- SRA - Secure Remote Access
- SRP - Secure Real-Time Protocol
- SSDP - Simple Service Discovery Protocol
- SSE - Security Service Edge (see next item)
- SSE - Simple Sharing Extensions - a specification that extends RSS from unidirectional to bidirectional information flows. (see previous item)
- SSH - Secure Shell
- SSID - Service Set Identifier - a case sensitive series of up to 32 alphanumeric characters that uniquely identify a wireless local-area network (WLAN). The SSID is sometimes referred to as the "network name".
- SSL - Secure Socket(s) Layer - a transaction security standard
- SSO - Single Sign On
- STD - Subscriber Trunk Dialing aka Subscriber Toll Dialing - the numbering feature that allows one to make toll calls directly; i.e., without the operator who used to be required to put the calls through.
- STIR - Secure Telephony Identity Revisited
- STP - Shielded Twisted Pair (see next item)
- STP - Standing Tree Protocol (see previous item)
- SV - Software Verification
- SWC - Serving Wire Center
- SWG - Secure Web Gateway
- T-MPLS - Transport MPLS
- T&M - Time & Materials
- T1 - DS1 (as opposed to DSL) - highly reliable voice or data service - see T1 Service Glossary for more info.
- TCP - Transmission Control Protocol
- TCPA - Telecommunication Consumer Protection Act
- TDM - Time Division Multiplexed (or Multiplexing)
- TDMA - Time Division Multiple Access - a wireless technology using TIA/EIA IS-136 protocol that allows multiple cell phones to share bandwidth.
- tfn - Toll Free Number
- TLS - Transport Layer Security
- TN - Telephone Number
- TPM - Trusted Platform Module
- TPV - Third Party Verification
- TRS - Telecommunications Relay Service - link between telephone users and people who use text telephones (aka TTYs).
- UBR - Unspecified Bit Rate - an ATM bandwidth-allocation service that uses available bandwidth with no guaranteed throughput level.
- UC - Unified Communications - a service that includes voice services plus other communications options like text, chat, and email.
- UCaaS- Unified Communications as a Service - UC in the cloud.
- UC&C - Unified Communications & Collaboration.
- Ucpe - Universal cpe
- UDP - User Datagram Protocol
- UEBA - User and Entity Behavior Analytics - a category of cybersecurity tools that analyze user behavior using advanced analysis to detect anomalies.
- UEM - Unified Endpoint Management - UEM is an outgrowth of EMM, MDM and other client management tools for providing security management of endpoint devices like PCs and mobile devices.
- UMA - Unified Mobile
- UMTS - Universal Mobile Telecommunications System - a third-generation (3G) cell phone technology that is being developed into a 4G technology. Theoretically, it can support data transfer rates up to 14 Mpbs depending on the implementation.
- UNE - Unbundled Network Element - defined by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as any "facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service," as well as "features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment." The most important UNE to most CLECs is the local loop, or "last mile", which gives CLECs access to the ILEC's customers.
- UNI - User Network Interface
- UPnP - Universal Plug and Play
- UTM - Unified Threat Management
- UTP - Unshielded Twisted Pair
- UWB - Ultrawideband - a short range transmission alternative to Bluetooth.
- VA - Virtual Assets
- VBR - Variable Bit Rate
- VCC - Voice Call Continuity
- VDI - Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
- VDSL - Very high speed DSL
- VLAN - Virtual LAN
- VNF - Virtual Network Function. A VNF is a virtualized task, typically within a virtual machine hosted on an edge device, that replaces functions formerly performed by hardware devices; e.g., firewalls, routers, switches, gateways, DNS, NAT, and caching.
- VOD - Video on Demand.
- VoIP - Voice over Internet Protocol - Method of providing voice or phone service via internet connections
- VoWLAN - Voice-over-WLAN
- VPLS - virtual private LAN service - A Layer 2 service offering any-to-any connectivity and a full mesh.
- VPN - Virtual Private Network - classic VPN uses IPsec to encrypt transmissions for connections made over the Internet.
- VRF - Virtual Route Fields is a layer 3 architecture
- WAAP - Web application and API protection
- WAF - Web Application Firewall - a firewall able to filter the content of specific web applications.
- WAN - Wide Area Network
- WDM - Wavelength Division Multiplexing aka DWDM. See DWDM for more info.
- Web 2.0 - Web 2.0 is sort of an attitude or an approach to the World Wide Web. It generally refers to a second generation of services available on the web that lets people collaborate and share information online. Examples of Web 2.0 are Wikipedia, Flickr, Google Maps, Del.icio.us, Google AdSense, Yahoo's new My Web 2.0, 43 Things, and blogs and wikis in general.
- WebRTC- Web Real Time Communications - a standard that enables web browsers for voice calling, video chat, and P2P file sharing.
- WEP - Wired Equivalent Privacy - a security protocol meant to safeguard wireless packet transmissions that is inferior to WPA.
- WFA - Work From Anywhere (LogMeIn)
- WFH - Work From Home
- WFM - Wideband FM - Frequency Modulation which uses a wider bandwidth than normal FM and which thus typically has an improved signal-to-noise ratio. (see next item)
- WFM - Workforce Management (see previous item)
- WFO - Workforce Optimization
- WIC - WAN Interface Card - A router has a WIC per T1 in a bonded T1.
- Wi-Fi - Wireless Fidelity, a set of standards known as 802.11
- WiMax - Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
- WISP - Wireless Internet Service Provider (see next item)
- WISP - Written Information Security Program (see previous item)
- WLAN - Wireless LAN
- WORM - Write Once Read Many
- WPA - Wi-Fi Protected Access - a security protocol meant to safeguard wireless packet transmissions that is defined in standard 802.11i and that is superior to WEP.
- XCaaS - Experience Communications as a Service
- XDR - Extended Detection & Response
- XML - Extensible Markup Language - XML is a simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML. Originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing, XML is also playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the Web and elsewhere.
- ZTA - Zero Trust Approach
- ZTNA - Zero Trust Network Access - a set of technologies that operates on an adaptive trust model in which access is granted only on a "need-to-know" basis defined by specific policies. Only traffic from authenticated users, devices, or applications is granted access to other users, devices, or applications.
Telecommunications/Technology Glossary Acronyms Abbreviations Dictionary
A-D E-K L-Z
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