DLC

The term DLC has different meanings attached to it, depending upon the perspective it is used in. The term means something different in a general perspective, while with respect to physics, it means something else, however, this article will only deal with this term with respect to the networking and computing world. In the networking and computing world the term DLC has two meaning attached to it, that is, it is used as an acronym for two different things. These are discussed in the following material.

The first meaning is the digital loop carrier, which basically is a digital system that uses the digital transmissions to extend the range of the local loop farther, which would not be achievable by the use of simple twisted pair of copper wire. The reason this technology is used are, imminent cable supply shortage, that is, the demand for the cable wires to extend the network was much too high as compared to the production of the cable wire, the second reason was cable route congestion, that is, in the urban area or some building, there was no space left to add more cable as all of the previous cables were already being used and to extend the range further new cable could not be inserted due to lack of space. The third reason was expenses, which were quite high due to the high cost of the cable and installation labor charges. Thus the DLC was introduced as a solution.

The second meaning attached to this term is Data Link Control, which is the second lowest layer in the OSI reference model and which is responsible for the exchange of the data in the entire network. Every NIC has a specific DLC code which is used to uniquely indentify the node on the network and therefore some of the network protocols make use of these DLC addresses extensively.