Monday, July 9, 2001		Bits & Bytes

AMR: Short for Audio Modem Riser, an Intel specification that defines a new architecture for the design of motherboards. AMR lets manufacturers create motherboards without analog I/O functions. Instead, these functions are placed on a separate card — with the codec chip — that plugs in perpendicular to the motherboard so that the motherboard and ‘riser’ card form a right angle.

Choke packet: A specialised packet that is used for flow control along a network. A router detects congestion by measuring the percentage of buffers in use, line utilisation and average queue lengths. When it detects congestion, it sends choke packets across the network to all the data sources associated with the congestion. The sources respond by reducing the amount of data they are sending.

DLCI: Short for data link connection identifier. A number of a private or switched virtual circuit in a Frame Relay network that tell the Frame Relay how to route the data. The DLCI field identifies which logical circuit the data travels over.

Action script: The scripting language used in Macromedia Flash. It is similar in syntax to JavaScript.