Drop (telecommunication)
Encyclopedia
Drop, in telecommunication
, has several meanings.
Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
, has several meanings.
- In a communications network, a drop is the portion of a device directly connected to the internal station facilities, such as toward a telephone switchboardTelephone switchboardA switchboard was a device used to connect a group of telephones manually to one another or to an outside connection, within and between telephone exchanges or private branch exchanges . The user was typically known as an operator...
, toward a switching center, or toward a telephone exchangeTelephone exchangeIn the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of electronic components that connects telephone calls...
. A drop can also be a wire or cableCableA cable is two or more wires running side by side and bonded, twisted or braided together to form a single assembly. In mechanics cables, otherwise known as wire ropes, are used for lifting, hauling and towing or conveying force through tension. In electrical engineering cables are used to carry...
from a pole or cable terminus to a building. It may also be referred to as a downleadDownleadA downlead is an electrical wire or cable connecting an outdoor structure to an indoor or ground structure.* Most often, it refers to the wire connecting an outdoor television antenna to the interior, and may also be referred to informally as a drop.* It may also refer to the wires in a lightning...
. These cables may be reinforced to withstand the tension (due to gravity and weather) of an aerial drop (i.e., hanging in air), as in "messenger" type RG-6RG-6RG-6/U is a common type of coaxial cable used in a wide variety of residential and commercial applications. The term "RG-6" itself is quite generic and refers to a wide variety of cable designs, which differ from one another in shielding characteristics, center conductor composition, and...
coaxial cableCoaxial cableCoaxial cable, or coax, has an inner conductor surrounded by a flexible, tubular insulating layer, surrounded by a tubular conducting shield. The term coaxial comes from the inner conductor and the outer shield sharing the same geometric axis...
, which is reinforced with a steel messenger wire along its length.
- To drop is to delete, intentionally or unintentionally, or to lose part of a signal, such as dropping bitBit slipIn digital transmission, bit slip is the loss of a bit or bits, caused by clock drift – variations in the respective clock rates of the transmitting and receiving devices....
s from a bit stream.