MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-270): Installing ...

Glossary G-7
boot sector A critical disk structure for starting your computer, located at sector 1 of
each volume or floppy. It contains executable code and data that is required by
the code, including information used by the file system to access the volume. The
boot sector is created when you format the volume.
boot-sector virus A type of virus that resides in the first sector of a floppy disk or
hard drive. When the computer is booted, the virus executes. In this common
method of transmitting viruses from one floppy disk to another, the virus replicates
itself onto the new drive each time a new disk is inserted and accessed.
bottleneck A device or program that significantly degrades network performance.
Poor network performance results when a device uses noticeably more CPU time
than it should, consumes too much of a resource, or lacks the capacity to handle
the load. Potential bottlenecks can be found in the CPU, memory, network interface
card (NIC), and other components.
bps See bits per second (bps).
broadcast A transmission sent simultaneously to more than one recipient. In communication
and on networks, a broadcast message is one distributed to all stations
or computers on the network.
broadcast storm An event that occurs when there are so many broadcast messages
on the network that they approach or surpass the capacity of the network bandwidth.
This can happen when one computer on the network transmits a flood of
frames, saturating the network with traffic so it can no longer carry messages from
any other computer. Such a broadcast storm can shut down a network.
buffer A reserved portion of RAM in which data is held temporarily, pending an
opportunity to complete its transfer to or from a storage device or another location
in memory.
built-in group One type of group account used by Windows XP Professional. Builtin
groups, as the name implies, are included with the operating system and have
been granted useful collections of rights and built-in abilities. In most cases, a
built-in group provides all the capabilities needed by a particular user. For example,
if a user account belongs to the built-in Administrators group, logging on with
that account gives the user administrative capabilities. See also user account.
bus Parallel wires or cabling that connect components in a computer.
byte A unit of information consisting of 8 bits. In computer processing or storage, a
byte is often equivalent to a single character, such as a letter, numeral, or punctuation
mark. Because a byte represents only a small amount of information,
amounts of computer memory are usually given in kilobytes (1024 bytes or 2
raised to the 10th power), megabytes (1,048,576 bytes or 2 raised to the 20th
power), gigabytes (1024 megabytes), terabytes (1024 gigabytes), petabytes (1024
terabytes), or exabytes (1024 petabytes).