
This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition
Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Preface
Conventions
Most definitions are given upon first encountering a new term. There’s a glossary
included in case you miss a definition or just need a refresher.
Carrier is a word that is referred to in many different ways throughout the book.
Sometimes it means a phone company, other times it refers to a data link system.
Wherever a word has two potential meanings, the context should tell you which
meaning is appropriate.
In most cases, examples are provided in terms of North American standards and
practices. Where appropriate, European or Asian equivalents are mentioned.
Kilobit is abbreviated as k, while kilobits per second shows up as kbps. The same
convention is used for mega- and giga- prefixes where applicable. For the sake of
clarity, many authors will define whether kilo means 1,000 or 1,024. This is an
important distinction, but you don’t need to worry much about it here. It’s safe to
assume a multiple of 1,000 when kilo is used. That is, 64 kilobits is exactly 64,000
bits and so on.
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
Plain text
Indicates menu titles, menu options, menu buttons, and keyboard accelerators
(such as Alt and Ctrl).
Italic
Indicates new or technical terms, system calls, URLs, hostnames, email
addresses, filenames, file extensions, ...