Click on an index letter to navigate through our glossary terms:

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z

MAP
Maintenance and administration panel. On a PBX, the device that allows you to maintain and administer the system.
MAPI (MESSAGING APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE)
Microsoft's set of software functions that allow messaging modules to interact with each other, specifying the format of various message types and how to transfer and store them.
MASS STORAGE
A term that refers to data storage that is generally greater than is available in the computer's system memory (RAM); this term usually refers to floppy disk or hard disk storage
MEGABIT
One million binary digits or bits. Note that this term is usually used in reference to serial data transfer and really means 1,000,000 and not 1024 x 1024
MEGABYTE
1,048,576 BYTEs (see also). The common unit of measuring computer memory and smaller MASS STORAGE (see also) media.
MEGAHERTZ
One million cycles (HERTZ, see also) per second. Commonly used to measure the FREQUENCY (see also) of TV and radio broadcast transmissions
MODEM (MODULATOR/DEMODULATOR)
A device that converts digital signals to analog signals for transmission over the analog telephone network, and converts the analog signals back to digital on the receiving end.
MOTHERBOARD
The main electronic circuit board of a computer; contains the CPU, some system memory (RAM), keyboard controller, BIOS software. Sometimes contains serial port(s), printer port(s), mouse port, video display adapter, floppy drive controller, etc.
MTBF (MEAN TIME BETWEEN FAILURE)
The length of time that a user can expect a piece of equipment to remain operable before it experiences a serious fault.
MUX (MULTIPLEXOR)
A device that combines information that would require multiple wire pairs into one pair of wires by either FREQUENCY-DIVISION (see also) or TIME-DIVISION of the information.