Acrynoms starting with 'N' commonly used in data communications

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0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

(suggestions for additions of acronyms or terms)

Acronym	Description
NADF	North American Directory Forum. A collection of organizations which offer, or plan to offer, public Directory Services in North America, based on the CCITT X.500 Recommendations.
NAK	Negative Acknowledgment. See ACK
namespace	A commonly distributed set of names in which all names are unique.
NANOG	North American Network Operator's Group. The primary forum for information exchange among U.S. exchange point participants, Internet Service Providers, and end users. NANOG meetings offer updates on federal and industry network initiatives, network routing and operations, Internet growth and performance, registry and allocation issues, and emerging technologies and protocols.
NAP	Network Access Point. Another name for an Internet Exchange Point.
NAT	Network Address Translation
NEBE	Near End Block Errors
NEBS	Network Equipment Building Standard was designed by the TELCO community to handle a number of problems associated with housing very expensive and delicate equipment. The NEBS specifications address many CO hazards from electrical shielding to powering to acts of God such as earthquakes and fires.
NERC	North American Electric Reliability Corporation is the electric reliability organization (ERO) certified by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ( FERC ) to establish and enforce reliability standards for the bulk power system. More information on NERC is available from their website at: http://www.nerc.com/Pages/default.aspx
NBP	Name Binding Protocol The AppleTalk transport-level protocol that translates a character string name into the internet address of the corresponding socket client; NBP enables AppleTalk protocols to understand user-defined zones and device names by providing and maintaining translation tables that map these names to corresponding socket addresses.
NetBIOS	Network Basic Input Output System. The standard interface to networks on IBM PC and compatible systems.
netiquette	A term meaning proper behavior on a network.
netmask	A 32-bit bit mask which shows how an Internet address is to be divided into network, subnet, and host parts. The netmask has ones in the bit positions in the 32-bit address which are to be used for the network and subnet parts, and zeros for the host part. The mask should contain at least the standard network portion (as determined by the address’s class), and the subnet field should be contiguous with the network portion.
Network	A computer network is a data communications system which interconnects computer systems at various different sites. A network may be composed of any combination of LANs, MANs or WANs.
network address	The network portion of an IP address. For a class A network, the network address is the first byte of the IP address. For a class B network, the network address is the first two bytes of the IP address. For a class C network, the network address is the first three bytes of the IP address. In each case, the remainder is the host address. In the Internet, assigned network addresses are globally unique.
network byte order	The Internet-standard ordering of the bytes corresponding to numeric values.
NFC	Near Field Communication
NFS	Network File System. A protocol developed by Sun Microsystems, and defined in RFC 1094 (RFC 1813 defines Version 3), which allows a set of computer system to cooperatively access each other's files in a transparent manner.
NFV	Network Functions Virtualization makes use of software on generic servers to provide services like that of a router, firewall, etc.
Network Layer	The OSI layer that is responsible for routing, switching, and subnetwork access across the entire OSI environment.
NI-1	National ISDN-1
NIC	Network information Center. Originally created to serve ARPANET, there are now many NICs providing user assistance and more. (alternate meaning depending upon context) Network Interface Card. Generally referring to a LAN adapter such as a 10BaseT NIC.
NID	Network Interface Device is device that serves demarcation point between the carrier's local loop and the customer's premises.
NIST	National Institute of Standards and Technology. (Formerly NBS).
NMS	Network Management Station. The system responsible for managing a (portion of a) network. The NMS talks to network management agents, which reside in the managed nodes, via a network management protocol.
NNI	(Network to Network Interface) Describes the connection between two public service network providers.
NNTP	Network News Transfer Protocol. A protocol, defined in RFC 977, for the distribution, inquiry, retrieval, and posting of news articles.
NOC	Network Operations Center. Any center tasked with the operational aspects of a production network. These tasks include monitoring and control, trouble-shooting, user assistance, and so on.
node	An addressable device attached to a computer network.
non-ISDN trunk	Any trunk not served by either SS7 or D-Channel signaling.
NREN	National Research and Educational Network. This network is still on the "drawing board." It is expected to become a state of the art high-speed network for research and education in the US. In recent years the NREN has become synonymous with the National Information Infrastructure, often referred to as the Information Superhighway.
NRZ	Non-Return to Zero is a binary encoding scheme representing ones and zeros by opposite and alternating high and low voltages, in which there is no return to zero voltage between the encoded bits.
NRZ	Non-Return to Zero Inverted is a binary encoding scheme which inverts the signal 1 and leave the signal unchanged or a 0. Also called transition coding.
NSAP	Network Service Access Point. The point at which the OSI Network Service is made available to a Transport entity.
NSF	National Science Foundation.
NSFNET	National Science Foundation NETwork. A collection of local, regional, and mid-level networks in the U.S. tied together by a high-speed backbone. NSFNET provides scientists access to a number of supercomputers across the country.
NT	Network Termination
NTE	Network Termination Equipment
NTU	Networks Termination Unit
NTP	Network Time Protocol. A protocol built on top of TCP that assures accurate local time-keeping with reference to radio and atomic clocks located on the Internet. This protocol is capable of synchronizing distributed clocks within milliseconds.