American Research Group, has become 'Global Knowledge', out of Cary NC, conducts comprehensive, hands on authorized training for companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, and Nortel. ARG web-site .

ATCOM - Army Aviation and Troop Command, formerly based at 4300 Goodfellow in St. Louis, was moved to Huntsville, AL in 1997 following a decision by the Base Relocation and Closure Committee (BRAC). I supported network computing for AVRDEC (Aviation, Research, Design, and Engineering Center). ATCOM was re-organized by the Army and renamed AMCOM .

AT&T Managed Internet Services - Corporate Internet access offered by AT&T featuring dedicated access speeds to T3. This service is monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the WorldNet Operations Center in Bridgeton, MO. See BoardWatch magazine site for more information on the AT&T Internet backbone.

ATM: Asynchronous Transfer Mode - A cell-based switching protocol designed to handle voice, video and data traffic.

BGP - Border Gateway Protocol - A policy-based routing protocol used by large organizations and Internet Service Providers to advertise what routes are available through that provider or organization. Is considered an "exterior" routing protocol, in that it is used to advertise what routes you have to others.

Computer Data Systems, Inc. - One Curie Court, Rockville, MD 20850. A technical contracting firm dealing primarily with the U.S Federal Government. They have merged with Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS) to form ACS Government Solutions Group, Inc. See CDSI or ACS sites for more information.

Creditor Resources, Inc. - 1100 Johnson Ferry Rd., Atlanta, GA. A provider of credit insurance and services to credit unions. Uses automated loan processing systems as a platform for insurance sales. CRI

Ethernet - a very popular LAN protocol originally developed by Xerox, DEC, and Intel.

FRAME-RELAY - A WAN switching protocol whose primary advantage is allowing many "virtual" circuits to share one physical port, thus reducing the per/port cost of WAN connections. Another advantage is variable bandwith options (Comitted Information Rates), that allow more flexibility in pricing and more performance options than a fixed bandwidth data connection such as a T1.

IPX - The networking protocol used by Novells' Netware network operating system. Originally developed for use on LANs, it is difficult to use properly in larger Wide Area Networks.

LAN - Local Area Network

NLSP - Netware Link State Protocol - An IPX based routing protocol that reduces broadcasts over wide-are networks and scales better than IPX RIP.

OSPF - Open Shortest Path First routing protocol - this has replace RIP as one of the more popular TCP/IP routing protocols. It is a link-state protocol that considers the characteristics of a particular wide area path, as opposed to RIP, which is concerned only with the number of "hops. Considered an "interior" routing protocol.

RIP - RIP ver. 1 is a "standard" routing protocol mostly used in IP LANs. It is simple to set up, yet doesn't scale well nor support classless subnetting. Considered a "distance-vector" protocol, RIP bases routing decisions on the number of "hops" to a destination, regardless of other characteristics of a given path. RIP version 2 adds the capability of classless routing while maintaining compatibility with RIP ver. 1. RIP can also be used by IPX networks.

Senior Technical Associate - - An management position that is part of AT&T's "Technical Career Plan" offered as an alternative to the traditional management career track. It allows participants the opportunity to get ahead while remaining in a technical career path. I began at AT&T Salary Grade TCP 4 - and accepted a promotion to TCP level 5 in Jan. of 1998.

T1 - Also referred to as DS-1 (Digital Signal-1) is a digital circuit that can carry 1.54 megabytes per second of data. It is composed of 24 channels of 64k each, referred to as DS 0's.

T3 - DS-3, a digital circuit capable of carrying 44.736 Mbps.

TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol - - originally designed for use on a network connecting U.S. Government agencies, this suite of protocols has become the de-facto standard for todays' Internet.

WAN - Wide Area Network

WorldNet Intranet Connect Service - A wide-area networking service originally offered as a joint venture between AT&T and Novell named Netware Connect Service. The original offering was designed to build a semi-public, business-oriented internetwork based on the Novell Netware 4.1 operating system. Due to the explosive growth of the World-Wide Web, the service was re-named "Intranet Connect" and placed in the AT&T WorldNet family of Internet services, where the service has continued to grow.

Running both the Novell IPX and Internet IP protocols, this nationwide service offers dedicated connectivity through AT&T Frame-Relay at speeds up to T1. Dial-up customers can access their home office and/or the entire Internet through local or toll-free 800 service. Several layers of network security options are available, with the newest to be a Virtual Private Networking service, which will completely firewall private corporate networks (including dial-up users) from the Internet.

The entire network is actively monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from the WorldNet Operations Center in Bridgeton, MO.

X.25 - An older yet popular standard for packet-switched data networking that uses extensive error-checking to achieve reliable transport, and thus is slower than a protocol that does not use such extensive checks, (such as frame-relay).