ISP Information:
Wired Equivalent Privacy or less frequently, Wireless Encryption Protocol. A security protocol for wireless networks defined in the 802.11b standard. Being key-phrase based, it does not provide a high enough level of security for critical data that might be specifically targetted for its value, but is reasonable for home network security in most cases.
ISP Glossary:
WEP - It was 40 years ago today (4/7/64) that IBM announced its System/360line of mainframe computers, introducing an architecture still usedtoday and breaking new ground.S/360 was built with the idea of teleprocessing and soon it was usedfor considerable data communication. The Bell System's had a lot ofbusiness from this, both dial-up and private lines. I don't thinkS/360's precedessors, such as the 7090, did much teleprocessing exceptin very specialized circumstances. The S/360 architecture of channelsand interupts worked well with teleprocessing requirements. Thegrowth of S/360 fueled Bell System work in modems and datatransmission.Today we take all the following for granted, but it was a majortechnological and software achievement for IBM to achieve thefollowing features in 1964.The success of S/360 and its successors in the marketplace madecomputers a commonplace item in industry and government. Theprinciples of its architecture and operating system, described below,were included in the PC.S/360 had several advantages:1) A uniform machine for both science and business applications.Science/engineering requires high speed numeric processing, typicallyusing fixed binary words. Business requires character manipulation,typically using single alpha-numeric characters grouped in varyinglengths. Companies could now use a single machine to do both kinds ofwork efficiently.2) A uniform machine for both large and small applications. To keephardware costs down, small machines had limited storage addressing andcommand sets. The architecture of S/360 made it possible foreconomical small machines to be sold that were compatible with largemachines. This meant as customers grew and required more powerfulcomputers, they need not rewrite their applications.3) Hardware emulation of earlier computers. This allowed customers tocontinue using older applications until they got around to convertingthem. (Many never bothered to convert). The use of hardware(microcode) emulation allowed the old applications to run faster onthe new machine without change.4) Multi-tasking. Computer CPUs were extremely fast, much faster thanmechanical printers, disks, and tapes. S/360 allowed for severalprograms to run at the same time, making more efficient use of themachine's full resources. For example, on-line programs could runwhile batch jobs were running. Multi-tasking required a sophisticatedhardware approach to keeping applications separate and serviced.5) A sophisticated operating system: While earlier machines had somecontrol programs, S/360 had sophisticated support services. Simplemachines had none.[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I remember when Amoco credit cardphased out their manual accounting operation and went with S-360in 1964 or so. Geeze, forty years ago ... :( PAT]
|
