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Motherboard
A motherboard is the central or primary circuit board making up
a complex electronic system, such as a modern computer. It is
also known as a main board, baseboard, system board, or, on Apple
computers, a logic board, and is sometimes abbreviated as mobol.
Most after-market motherboards produced today are designed for
so-called IBM-compatible computers, which hold over 96% of the
personal computer market today. Motherboards for IBM-compatible
computers are specifically covered in the PC motherboard
article.
The basic purpose of the motherboard, like a backplane, is to
provide the electrical and logical connections by which the
other components of the system communicate.
A typical desktop computer is built with the microprocessor,
main memory, and other essential components on the motherboard.
Other components such as external storage, controllers for video
display and sound, and peripheral devices are typically attached
to the motherboard via edge connectors and cables, although in
modern computers it is increasingly common to integrate these
"peripherals" into the motherboard.
A network that connects two or more LANs but that is limited to
a specific and contiguous geographical area such as a college
campus, industrial complex, or a military base. A CAN, may be
considered a type of MAN (metropolitan area network), but is
generally limited to an area that is smaller than a typical MAN.
This term is most often used to discuss the implementation of
networks for a contiguous area. For Ethernet based networks in
the past, when layer 2 switching (i.e., bridging (networking)
was cheaper than routing, campuses were good candidates for
layer 2 networks, until they grew to very large size. Today, a
campus may use a mixture of routing and bridging. The network
elements used, called "campus switches", tend to be optimized to
have many Ethernet-family (i.e., IEEE 802.3) interfaces rather
than an arbitrary mixture of Ethernet and WAN interfaces.
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