RA! NAP! CAP!
A glossary of NII acronyms


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ANS
Advanced Network Services

AUP
Acceptable Use Policy

CAP
Competitive Access Provider

CO+RE
COmmercial plus Research and Education

FARNET
Federation of American Research NETworks

FDDI
Fiber Distributed Data Interface

FIX
Federal Internet eXchange point (sometimes termed just an exchange point)

IP
Internet Protocol

IXC
Inter-eXchange Carrier

ISP
Internet Service Provider

IRC
Inter-Regional Connectivity

kbps
Thousands of bits per second

MAE
Metropolitan Area Exchange (a NAP for a metropolitan area)

Mbps
Millions of bits per second

Merit
Michigan Education, Research, and Information Triad

NAP
Network Access Point (sometimes termed just an exchange point)

NII
National Information Infrastructure

NSF
National Science Foundation

NTTF
National Telecommunications Task Force (an Educom activity)

OC-3
Optical Carrier-3 (digital circuit running at 155 Mbps)

OC-12
Optical Carrier-12 (digital circuit running at 622 Mbps)

PBX
Public Branch eXchange (i.e. a phone switch)

RA
Routing Arbiter

RADB
Routing Arbiter Data Base

R&E
Research and Education

SNA
Systems Network Architecture

T-1
Digital circuit running at 1.544 Mbps

T-3
Digital circuit running at 45 Mbps

TCP/IP
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

VBNS
NSF's Very-high-speed Backbone Network Service


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