modem

A piece of networkA collection of items like computers, printers, phones, and other electronic items that are connected together by switches and routers. A network allows the connected devices to talk to each other electronically. The internet is an example of an extremely large network. Your home network, if you have one, is an example of a small local network. equipment that converts data into a format that can be transmitted. Old modems sent the data on a phone line; modern cable modems send the data across a cable connectionThis refers to some kind of electrical connection. It might be through a network cable, a cable connection, a wireless connection, or a phone - just to name some options. The connection might be to the internet or to some other local device.. It stands for “modulatorThis generically refers to how some physical medium - like a wire or a radio signal - is modified to carry data. It might be by moving the voltage up and down, or it might be by changing frequencies of some periodic signal. There are lots of ways of "coding" data so that it can travel across the medium. It's a really low-level detail; most of us don't need to know any of the fine print. The opposite of modulation is demodulation, and a piece of network equipment that does both (modulation for sending, demodulation for receiving) is called a "modem."/demodulator.”