A modern normal network card will have onboard an Ethernet controller which, of course, is a pre-programmed microcontroller. Not only does it do the things required to keep a computer on the network, ...

Most of my current work for PCMag is about printers and projectors, but I've covered a wide variety of other subjects—in more than 4,000 pieces, over more than 40 years—including both computer-related ...

A network card (also called a network adapter, network interface card, or NIC for short) acts as the interface between a computer and a network cable. The purpose of the network card is to prepare, ...

Equipment from the telephone company that terminates its lines at the customer's premises. The network interface device (NID) provides the demarcation point between the telephone network and the ...

The ip command has a lot to tell you about the configuration and state of your network connections, but what do all those words and numbers mean? Let’s take a deep dive in and see what all the ...

Linux systems provide a lot of useful commands for reviewing network configuration and connections. Here's a look at a few, including ifquery, ifup, ifdown and ifconfig. There are a lot of commands ...

Longer chip lifetimes, more data to process and move, and a slowdown in the rate of processor improvements has created a series of constantly shifting bottlenecks. Kartik Srinivasan, director of data ...

Interface packet loss provides indications of link problems that shouldn’t go ignored. But then you have to decide on an alerting threshold that indicates a problem without creating too many false ...

Network protocols are formal standards and policies consisting of rules, procedures, and formats that define how data is exchanged over networks. They ensure that devices can communicate effectively, ...