RAO

Revenue Accounting Office

RBHC

Regional Bell Holding Company

RBOC

Regional Bell Operating company

RBS

robbed bit signaling

Regional Bell Holding Company (RBHC)

RBHC is one of 7 regional companies created by the AT&T divestiture to assume ownership of the Bell operating companies. They are Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, Bell South, NYNEX, Pacific Telesis, Southwestern Bell and US West.

Repeater

In digital transmission, a repeater is equipment that receives a pulse train, amplifies it, retimes it, and then reconstructs the signal for retransmission. In IEEE 802 local area network (LAN) standards, a repeater is essentially two transceivers joined back to back and attached to two adjacent LAN segments. See transceiver.

RFC

request for comment

RFE

Request for Engineering

RFI

radio frequency interference

RFP

request for proposal

RF

radio frequency

Routers

In IEEE 802 local area network (LAN) standards, routers are devices that connect autonomous networks of like architecture at the network layer (layer 3). Unlike a bridge which operates transparently to communicating end-terminals at the logical link layer (layer 2), a router reacts only to packets addressed to it by either a terminal or another router. Routers perform packet (as opposed to frame) routing and forwarding functions; they can select one of many potential paths based on transit delay, network congestion or other criteria. How routers perform their functions is largely determined by the protocols implemented in the networks they interconnect.