What Is

A Multiplexer (commonly called Mux) is a device that can select one of several input signals and then forward it to a single output line. It is generally implemented using a combinatorial circuit which prior information on the number of inputs. Mux are generally used to increase the amount of data that can be sent…

DAFS is a network file system protocol that enables applications to bypass Operating System control, buffering and network protocol operations while transferring data to and from application buffers. It uses Virtual Interface architecture as its transport mechanism to achieve this and is designed for cluster.ed, shared-file networks used for e-commerce, Internet and database applications over…

A digital footprint is the trace left by people when they are online or any interaction with the digital environment. On the internet, a digital footprint may be forum registrations, emails or digital images which leave traces of personal information of the user accessible by other users. It can be an indicator of the users…

Data vaulting is the process of protecting the data from hardware failures and security threats by sending it to some other off-site location. This is generally achieved through a direct data line or through the internet. The off site locations may compress and encrypt data for further security and also have auxiliary power backups to…

Data Recovery is the process of recovering data from a storage medium after the data is not accessible by normal means. This kind of condition may arise in case of damage, failure or corruption or accidental deletion from hard drives, solid state drives, CD’s, DVD’s, RAIDs etc. Recovering data can involve many techniques which include…

It is the process of copying data (transaction logs) to a second storage location in real time and keeping the two locations synchronized to provide active backup and redundancy in case of primary server failure or disaster and increasing availability. It was introduced into database software with Microsoft SQL Server 2005. In case the primary…

A cookie is a piece of information from a website that is stored on the requesting computers hard disk used to send state information to the browser and back to the originating website. It can be a record of user’s preferences which can be used later on, or session information serving as tokens attached to…

A non-volatile memory is that type of storage in which the data content are retained even when the device is powered down. Most memories like CDs, Magnetic Disks, HDD etc comprise non-volatile memories and are generally used as secondary memory for persistent storage over a large period of time. It also refers to the solid…

Massively Parallel Processor is a computer that has networked processors. It has many characteristics similar to cluster computers, but have specialized interconnect networks and are very larger than clusters spanning more than 100 processors. Each node, or processor has its own memory and OS and communicates with the other nodes through a high speed interconnect…

It is a malicious code that installs in the memory and then infects future programs. Also known as the Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR), it finds a way to load in the computer’s RAM and then infects the executable files that are opened by the user when a certain conditions are met. A few examples…

Often called as the absolute address, it is an explicit and actual designation of a memory location where a datum or instruction or peripheral device is present and retrieved from. It is also called the read address.   It is different from relative addresses which refer to a location with respect to another location called…

Flash memory is a non-volatile storage chip which can be erased and reprogrammed on a block basis rather than on a byte by byte basis. It can be a high density NAND type used in USB Mass storage devices, or a NOR type employed as replacements for the conventional EPROMs in the system BIOS chips.…

A disc image is a single file which contains an exact sector by sector replica of the source data storage medium like a hard disk, tape drive, CD, DVD or USB drive which acts as a perfect clone of the original media. It contains the complete contents and structures, sector information, file system tables etc.…

It is a situation in a computer when two or more processes wait for each other to finish and release the occupied resources, which does not happen eventually leading to the hanging or crashing of the two processes. Such problems occur in schedulers based on time shared computing models for multiprocessing when exclusive access to…

A buffer is a storage region in the physical memory to hold data temporarily while it is being shifted from one place to another for example while retrieving data from an input device or writing into an output device like printer. It is needed primarily to compensate the difference in operating speeds of the two…

A serial port is a communication interface where data flows in a serial manner, one bit at a time. The term ‘serial port’ usually refers to the RS-232 standard compliant interfaces though many other types of interfaces like USB and Ethernet also utilize serial communication for data transfer. Originally defined as a 25 pin interface,…

A parallel port is an interface found on electronic devices like computers to connect with certain peripherals using parallel communication. It is also called the printer port and the standard is defined in IEEE 1284. It uses a 25 pin DB-25 connector which is often called the Centronics interface. It found use in Dongles, Printer…

External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment is the external interface variant of the popular SATA technology competing with contemporaries like FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 (and now 3.0 also) in fast data transfer speed segment of external storage devices. It provides serial streamlined flow of data over s serial link rather than the old ATA that…

A wireless modem is a Modulator-Demodulator that is used to transmit and receive data over a wireless network link instead of wired connection lines. The protocols used on the wireless side of the link are different from the ones used in wired Modems and may utilize one or many technologies like GPRS, HSDPA, UMTS, WiMAX,…

USB Flash Drives are digital mass storage devices that contain flash memory interfaced with a Universal Serial Bus. These are hot swappable, rewriteable compact devices offering high storage capacities and have no moving parts and are much more reliable as compared to CDs and DVDs which have moving parts.  They use USB mass storage standard…