Glossary
Wiki
Short term pages a novice can use and an expert will not bounce from. Product cards use the same tagged affiliate links as the rest of the site.
Recent buying guides
Buying guides that use these terms. Each one has tagged product links.
Insta360 X5 vs GoPro MAX2: Which 360 Camera for Travel and Vlogging?
Sensor size and low light, 8K claims, replaceable lenses, battery, waterproofing, mic support, reframing apps, and price for travel and vlogging creators.
Best Under-Desk Walking Pads for a Standing Desk in 2026
Quiet, compact walking pads that slide under a sit-stand desk, ranked on belt length, deck height, noise, weight limit, and storage size, plus the desk height math to check first.
Minisforum MS-A2 Review: A Mini Workstation Built for the Home Lab
Minisforum MS-A2 review: a 16-core Ryzen 9 mini workstation with dual 10G SFP+, dual 2.5GbE, three NVMe slots with U.2 support, and a PCIe slot, plus its idle power, noise, and why the configured unit beats a DIY barebone build at 2026 RAM prices.
Best Thunderbolt Hubs for MacBook Pro in 2026: More Ports From One Cable
Powered hubs that turn one Thunderbolt port into three more, with laptop charging, plus how Mac display limits, charging wattage, and Thunderbolt 5 vs 4 decide which one fits.
Best DOCSIS 3.1 Cable Modems in 2026: Stop Paying the Rental Fee
Five DOCSIS 3.1 picks for buying your own cable modem, from the ARRIS SURFboard SB8200 for gigabit plans to 2.5GbE multi-gig models and one labeled modem/router combo, with port speed, ISP approval, and payback notes.
ORICO Dual-Bay NVMe Cloner Dock Review: Offline SSD Cloning Without a PC
ORICO's M2P2-C3 dual-bay NVMe cloner review: one-button offline cloning, tool-free bays, 10Gbps dock speed, heat, M.2 SATA limits, and how $75 to $100 compares to ORICO's 20Gbps and 40Gbps siblings.
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ADC
An analog-to-digital converter turns a mic or line signal into digital samples your DAW and computer can record.
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Alt Mode
DisplayPort Alt Mode remaps USB-C SuperSpeed pins to carry video, which is why a USB-C to HDMI cable works on some ports and stays dark on others.
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ATX 3.1
ATX 3.1 is Intel's power-supply revision after ATX 3.0 that tightens GPU power delivery with native 12V-2x6 / PCIe 5.1 cables and clearer transient handling.
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AVR
Automatic Voltage Regulation on a UPS boosts or bucks input so brownouts and mild overvoltage get corrected without switching to battery.
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C
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Cardioid
Cardioid is the heart-shaped mic pickup pattern that hears best in front and rejects sides and rear, which is why most USB desk mics default to it for calls and streaming.
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Cat6
Category 6 Ethernet: 250 MHz twisted-pair cable for 1 GbE to 100 m and 10 GbE on short runs, versus Cat5e and Cat6a.
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Cat6a
Cat6a (Category 6 Augmented) is the copper Ethernet class built for 10GBASE-T to 100 m, with roughly 500 to 550 MHz bandwidth and tighter alien-crosstalk control than Cat6.
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Clamshell
Hinged laptop form factor, and Mac “clamshell mode,” where the lid stays closed while you use an external display, keyboard, and mouse.
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CMR
Conventional magnetic recording gives every data track its own lane, which is why NAS and RAID buyers treat CMR as the safe default.
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Direct Attach
DAC / Direct Attach Copper: a short twinax cable with SFP+ (or QSFP) cages molded on both ends for short-reach 10G/25G/40G/100G switch-to-switch or NIC-to-switch links without separate optical modules.
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DisplayLink
A software-plus-chip path that turns USB into extra monitors, the usual fix when a Mac will not drive two independent displays from a plain USB-C dock.
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DisplayPort
VESA's PC video link: DP 1.4 is 32.4 Gbps with DSC, HDMI is the TV plug, and a dummy plug fakes a monitor for a headless GPU.
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Double-conversion
Double-conversion (online) UPS topology regenerates AC continuously through AC to DC to AC so the load never rides raw utility power.
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DRAM-less
A DRAM-less SSD skips onboard DRAM cache and leans on Host Memory Buffer (HMB) or firmware tricks, which is fine for light use until sustained writes fill the SLC cache and stutter.
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Dummy plug
A tiny HDMI or DisplayPort dongle that spoofs a monitor so a headless Mac or PC keeps a full-resolution virtual display for remote desktop.
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E-Marker
Listings call it e-Marked or 5A: the tiny chip in a USB-C plug that tells the port the cable can carry more than the safe 3A / USB 2.0 default.
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ECC
ECC (error-correcting code) RAM detects and corrects single-bit memory errors so a flaky DIMM is less likely to silently corrupt data in RAM.
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EDID
Extended Display Identification Data: the short identity blob a monitor (or dummy plug) sends so a GPU knows which resolutions and refresh rates to offer.
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H
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HDCP
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection: the copy-protection handshake on HDMI and DisplayPort that can blank a capture card, splitter, or dummy-plug path when a protected stream refuses to play.
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HDMI ARC
HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) sends TV audio back to a soundbar or AV receiver over the same HDMI cable that can carry video the other way, so you need fewer optical cables.
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HDR10
HDR10 is the open high dynamic range video standard: static metadata, Rec.2020 color, and PQ (ST 2084) tone mapping, usually aiming for about 1000-nit peaks on consumer displays.
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HID UPS
A HID UPS speaks USB HID Power Device class so the OS, NUT, or PowerChute can read battery %, load, and AC status without a proprietary serial dongle.
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Hot-swap
Hot-swap means you can remove or insert a drive while the chassis stays powered, handy for swapping failed disks, staging archives, and expanding a DAS without a full reboot.
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MLO
Multi-Link Operation: a Wi-Fi 7 feature that lets a device use more than one radio band at once for higher throughput and more reliable links.
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MoCA
MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) turns existing coax into a wired Ethernet path, with MoCA 2.5 commonly hitting about 2.5 Gbps between rooms that share the same coax plant.
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MST
DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport: one DP output feeding multiple monitors through a hub or daisy-chain, versus a dual-4K Thunderbolt/USB4 dock with separate tunnels.
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MU-MIMO
Multi-User MIMO: a Wi-Fi feature that lets a router talk to several compatible devices at once instead of one at a time.
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P
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Phantom power
48V DC sent up an XLR mic cable so a condenser microphone can work without a separate battery pack on the mic.
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PoE
PoE (IEEE 802.3af) is Type 1 Power over Ethernet: about 15.4 W at the switch or injector and about 12.95 W at the device after cable loss, enough for many VoIP phones, basic IP cams, and lighter APs.
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PoE+
PoE+ (IEEE 802.3at) is Type 2 Power over Ethernet: about 30 W at the switch or injector and 25.5 W at the device after cable loss, enough for many Wi-Fi 6 APs, PTZ cameras, and VoIP phones.
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PPS
PPS is the USB-PD 3.0 trick that lets a phone ask for voltage in 20 mV steps, which is what Samsung Super Fast Charging and similar phone profiles actually use.
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SATA
SATA (Serial ATA) is the everyday interface that connects 2.5/3.5-inch HDDs and SATA SSDs to PCs, NAS bays, and USB docks at up to 6 Gbps.
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SFP+
SFP+ (enhanced Small Form-factor Pluggable) is the hot-pluggable cage used for 10 Gigabit Ethernet optics, copper RJ45 modules, and twinax Direct Attach cables on switches and NICs.
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SHR
SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) is Synology’s volume layout that lets you mix drive sizes and grow usable space by replacing smaller disks later, without wiping the volume like classic fixed RAID.
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SMART
SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) is the drive firmware telemetry that reports health attributes (reallocated sectors, pending sectors, temperature, and more) so you can catch failing HDDs and SSDs before they dump your data.
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SMB
SMB (Server Message Block) is the Windows-native network file-sharing protocol: clients mount shares like \\NAS\folder over TCP 445, and most home NAS boxes speak it so PCs and Macs can treat network storage like a local drive.
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SMR
Shingled magnetic recording packs more data onto a platter by overlapping tracks, then slows to a crawl once the cache fills.
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Snapshot
A filesystem snapshot is a point-in-time, copy-on-write view of a volume for fast local recovery; it is not a substitute for offsite backups.
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Thunderbolt
Intel's certified USB-C path: a controller plus a protocol, which is why a USB-C dock is not Thunderbolt.
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TLC
TLC (Triple-Level Cell) is NAND flash that stores three bits per cell, the density sweet spot behind most consumer SATA and NVMe SSDs.
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TRIM
TRIM (and SCSI/USB UNMAP) is the OS command that tells an SSD which logical blocks are free so the controller can erase them in the background and keep write speeds from collapsing as the drive fills.
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UASP
UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) is the modern USB storage protocol that queues SCSI commands so docks and enclosures transfer faster than classic Bulk-Only Transport.
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USB 3.2
The naming mess: Gen 1 is 5 Gbps, Gen 2 is 10 Gbps, Gen 2x2 is 20 Gbps. USB-C is the plug; USB 3.2 is the data spec, not USB4.
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USB-PD
USB Power Delivery is the handshake that lets a USB-C cable carry laptop-class wattage, if the brick, cable, and device all agree.
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USB4
USB4 is the USB-IF spec that tunnels data, video, and PCIe over a USB-C plug, at 20 Gbps by default and 40 or 80 Gbps when the port, cable, and device all allow it.
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UVC
UVC is USB Video Class, the standard that lets capture cards and USB webcams show up in Zoom, Teams, and OBS without a vendor driver.
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W
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Wake-on-LAN
Wake-on-LAN (WoL) is a NIC feature that lets a magic packet on the LAN power a sleeping or soft-off PC, mini PC, or NAS back on so you can reach it without pressing the power button.
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Wi-Fi 6E
Wi-Fi 6E is Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) plus the new 6 GHz band: wider clean channels, less congestion from older 2.4/5 GHz clients, and a clearer path to multi-gig wireless when your devices and AP both speak 6E.
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WPA3
WPA3 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 3) is the current Wi-Fi security suite: SAE replaces the old PSK handshake, offline dictionary attacks get much harder, and Protected Management Frames plus optional 192-bit enterprise mode round out the upgrade from WPA2.
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10GbE
10GbE is 10 gigabit Ethernet: a wired link that moves about 10 Gbps over copper RJ45 (10GBASE-T), SFP+ fiber, or short DAC twinax, far above gigabit and most 2.5GbE desk runs.
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12V-2x6
12V-2x6 is the revised 12+4 pin high-power GPU connector (often labeled H++) that succeeded early 12VHPWR with deeper sense-pin seating.
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2.5GbE
2.5GbE (2.5 Gigabit Ethernet) is multi-gig copper Ethernet at 2.5 Gbps (about 2.5× Gigabit), usually over existing Cat5e/Cat6 cabling between NICs, USB adapters, and multi-gig switches.
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802.3bt
IEEE 802.3bt is the Power over Ethernet standard for PoE++ / 4PPoE, delivering Type 3 up to 60 W and Type 4 up to 90 W at the switch or injector over all four twisted pairs.