Panasonic FP-D250 User Manual page 586

Fast packet switching A WAN technology capable of transmitting data, digitized
voice and digitized image information. It makes use of short, fixed length packets (or
cells) that are all the same size. The underlying switching technology is based on the
statistical multiplexing of data and voice in fixed length cells. Any of these packets
could carry digital voice, data or digital image information. All the packets travel at
Level Two of the OSI Model, and routing is performed on the basis of the Level Two
addressing. Fast packet is an effective way of making best use of available bandwidth.
It offers the benefits of conventional multiplexing techniques and circuit switching
techniques. It is one of the transmission technologies being developed for use with
B-ISDN. The switch used to route packets in a fast packet network is termed a fast
packet switch. Also, fast packet technology can carry data transmissions that enter
the network using a frame relay access method. For particularly high speed
networking, an implementation of fast packet switching known as ATM is being
commercially developed.
Fault tolerance A method of making a computer system or network resilient to faults
or breakdowns to avoid lost data and downtime. For servers this involves such
techniques as disk mirroring, disk duplexing or mirrored servers. For LANs and WANs
it may involve the use of multiple redundant transmission links.
FCC (Federal Communications Commission) US regulatory and approvals agency.
FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) An optical fiber-based token-passing ring
LAN technology with dual counter-rotating rings. Each ring carries data at a rate of
100 Mbit/s using a 125MHz transmission frequency. It has been standardized by the
American National Standards Institute (ANSI). An FDDI network has two modes of
attachment: a device may be a Single Attach Station - attached to one ring - or a
Dual Attach Station - attached to both rings. Typical applications of FDDI are in the
area of high speed LAN backbones.
FIFO (First In, First Out) Queue handling method that operates on the first come,
first serve basis.
File All data that describes one document or image, maintained under a single
naming code and stored in a computer or in a storage medium.
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