Monday, February 23, 2004		ITerminology

AODV: Short for Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector, a routing protocol for ad hoc mobile networks with large numbers of mobile nodes. The protocol’s algorithm creates routes between nodes only when the routes are requested by the source nodes, giving the network the flexibility to allow nodes to enter and leave the network at will. Routes remain active only as long as data packets are traveling along the paths from the source to the destination. When the source stops sending packets, the path will time out and close.

USB flash drive: A small, portable flash memory card that plugs into a computer’s USB port and functions as a portable hard drive with up to 2GB of storage capacity. USB flash drives are touted as being easy-to-use as they are small enough to be carried in a pocket and can plug into any computer with a USB drive. USB flash drives have less storage capacity than an external hard drive, but they are smaller and more durable because they do not contain any internal moving parts.

Keyboard wedge: A hardware device or software program that interfaces with a computer to translate data read by a device other than a keyboard, such as a magnetic strip or bar code reader or other such scanning device, into keyboard data. For example, data entered into a database via a bar code reader must first be translated into alphanumeric characters in order to be understood by the person interfacing with the database since humans do not read bar codes. The term wedge comes from the fact that the hardware device typically sits, or wedges, between the keyboard and the system unit.