Glossaries

• Media Access Control Address (MAC Address)
• Also known as a hardware address or physical address. It is a unique identifier required for every physical port or device that connects to a LAN network. Other devices use the MAC address to create routing tables and data structures. It operates at the physical, data-link layer in contrast to IP addresses at the network layer.
• switch

• Mega bits per second (Mbps)
• Number of megabits per second. Equal to 1,000,000 bits per second or 1,000 kilobits per second.
• switch

• Multiple rate Digital Subscriber Line (MDSL)
• Also called Multiple Rate Symmetrical Digital Subscriber Line. A type of DSL technology with multiple transfer rates that can be set by the Internet Service Provider. The maximum transfer rate is 2 Mbit/s.
• switch

• Multiprotocol Label Switching-Transport Profile (MPLS-TP)
• The Multiprotocol Label Switching - Transport Profile is a variant of the IP-MPLS protocol issue from Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) together with International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization (ITU-T). The MPLS applies a Label Switching Path (LSP) on packet from multiple protocols to accelerate the speed of their distribution in Mesh infrastructure or over VPN without packet analysis.
  
  The MPLS-TP is a connection-oriented packed switched profile and the administrator will implement them like circuits of SDH infrastructure. Therefore, MPLS-TP features the OAM functions for the Alarm Monitoring and Alarm Signaling, Traffic Diagnosis and Circuit Performance Monitoring at every layer (Section, LSP, PW). In addition, this layer 2.5 protocol optimizes the transport over PTN infrastructure with enhanced carrier-grade protection switching, OAM and clock synchronization.
  
  TDM, ATM, Frame Relay are carried in point-to-point PWE3 and switched Ethernet is connected in PWE3 for point-to-point or VPLS to support Mesh multipoint.
• switch

• Management Information Base (MIB)
• A collection of information about devices on a network that can be managed with a protocol such as SNMP. The database is tree-based and hierarchical. Important documents that describe MIBs include RFC 1155 and 1213.
• switch

• Mobile Switching Center (MSC)
• The device that provides telephone switching and data routing for GSM/CDMA mobile phones.
• switch

• Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO)
• Also called a land station, it is the equivalent of a Central Office for a publicly switched telephone network, PSTN. Routes mobile calls, tracks and bills information, assigns and reassigns frequencies, and interacts with the land-based telephone network.
• switch

• Maintenance Termination Unit (MTU)
• Installed at the demarcation between the carrier's network and the customer premises equipment (CPE), it conducts tests on the CPE or the connected network to see if maintenance is necessary.
• switch

• Multiplexing
• Sharing the same channel with multiple users. Designed to use an under-utilized channel more effectively. Multiplexing can be done over time, frequency, or in code.
• switch