Monday, May 27, 2002		Bits & Bytes

TAN: Short for tiny area network, a LAN with only a few nodes. TANs are typically installed in homes or small office environments so that the devices can share resources, such as modems, files or printers.

Active desktop: A feature of Windows that began in Windows '98 that allows the user to store Web content on the desktop. The items that are placed on the active desktop receive feeds from the Internet that update the information as needed. They can also be static Web pages with hyperlinks on the desktop instead of in a browser. For example, a user can add such items as a stock ticker, a news feed, search buttons or weather reports. Active Desktop can host any HTML item, Java applets and ActiveX components.

AtoM: Short for Any Transport over MPLS, a technology developed by Cisco for transporting Layer 2 packets over an IP/MPLS backbone. The technology is designed to let ISPs combine multiple disparate data networks - such as Ethernet, ATM, Frame Relay, and Serial/PPP networks - onto a single MPLS-based backbone to save operational costs.