F

 

Facility: An existing or planned location or site at which prime movers, electric generators, and/or equipment for converting mechanical, chemical, and/or nuclear energy into electric energy are situated, or will be situated. A facility may contain more than one generator of either the same or different prime mover type. For a cogenerator, the facility includes the industrial or commercial process.  [DOE Glossary of Electricity Terms]

FAQ (Frequently Asked Question): A compilation of the most often asked questions and answers on a topic.

Fast Ethernet: A version of the IEEE 802.3 standard with speeds of 100-Mbps. See 100Base-T, 100VG-AnyLAN, and 100Base Cabling Systems. 

Favorites, see bookmarks.

FCC: The Federal Communications Commission is an independent United States government agency, directly responsible to Congress. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. http://www.fcc.gov

FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface): An American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-specified standard using fiber optics, dual ring topology, token passing access method, with data rates up to 100 Mbps. The standard specifies: multimode fiber; 50/125, 62.5/125, or 85/125 core cladding; an LED or laser light source; and 2 km for unrepeated data transmission at 40 Mbps. IPv6 over FDDI; RFC 2467.

FDM (Frequency-Division Multiplexing): FDM is a scheme in which numerous signals are combined for transmission on a single communications line or channel. Each signal is assigned a different frequency (subchannel) within the main channel. See also TDM.

FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access): FDMA uses FDM technology for systems which have many users needing access at the same time. Examples are satellite systems and analog cellular phone systems.

Federated Systems - Federation is a set of cooperating, yet autonomous systems that have no centralized control. Federated systems allow entities to define policies and procedures governing access and control of local resources and data.

FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission): FERC was created through the Department of Energy Organization Act on October 1, 1977. At that time, the Commission's predecessor, the Federal Power Commission (FPC), was abolished, and the new agency (FERC) inherited most of the FPC's responsibilities. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is an independent regulatory agency within the Department of Energy that:

• Regulates the transmission and sale of natural gas for resale in interstate commerce;
• Regulates the transmission of oil by pipeline in interstate commerce;
• Regulates the transmission and wholesale sales of electricity in interstate commerce;
• Licenses and inspects private, municipal and state hydroelectric projects;
• Oversees environmental matters related to natural gas, oil, electricity and hydroelectric projects;
• Administers accounting and financial reporting regulations and conduct of jurisdictional companies, and;
• Approves site choices as well as abandonment of interstate pipeline facilities.

[FERC]

File: Any computer document or program can be called a file although normally used to refer to a document created by a computer program.

File Compression: A method of storing files that uses less hard drive space than regular file formats. Compressed files cannot be used until they have been decompressed. Compressed files are easier to send across the Internet since they take less time to send and receive and are less susceptible to file corruption. Popular compression methods are PkZip for PC's (ending in .zip), Stuffit for Macintosh (ending in .sit), and gzip for Unix (ending in .Z). There are of course, many other compression methods used. Each format requires the appropriate program to compress and decompress the files.

File Server: A computer specifically intended for storing files that people can share over a network. The computer being used as the file server might not be able to be used for other common workstation tasks.

Finger: A software utility for locating people on other Internet sites. Finger is also sometimes used to give access to non-personal information, but the most common use is to see if a person has an account at a particular Internet site. Many sites do not allow incoming Finger requests, but many do.

Firewall: A system or combination of systems that enforces a boundary between two or more networks. A firewall is configurable to allow only certain information and messages. Both incoming and outgoing traffic is controlled.

Firm Power: Power or power-producing capacity intended to be available at all times during the period covered by a guaranteed commitment to deliver, even under adverse conditions.  [DOE Glossary of Electricity Terms]

First Mile:  A web site’s connection to the Internet. The bandwidth of the first mile is determined by the site’s internal network and the Internet connections provided by one or more ISPs. See also Internet Bottlenecks.

Flame: Originally, flame meant to debate in a passionate manner and many had polished their debate skills to an art form. Unfortunately, many debates turned into flame wars to the point that "to flame" someone became a derogatory term. As such, flame has come to refer to any kind of derogatory comment no matter how witless or crude.

Flame War: A heated debate that becomes rather personal in its attack loosing the original argument in the process. Some people still love to try to start flame wars then sit back and watch the fun.

Flamefest: Massive flaming.

Flaming: Sending hate email to an Internet user, usually a company or person who has violated netiquette, the rules of online conduct. A user who writes flames is known as a flamer.

FM (Frequency Modulation): FM changes its frequency in accordance with a modulating signal. The unmodulated frequency of a FM signal is called its center frequency. When a modulating signal is applied, the FM transmitter's frequency will swing above and below the center frequency according to the modulating signal.

Font: The style and format of the characters displayed in a document, also called a typeface.

Foo: A placeholder for nearly anything: a variable, function, procedure, or even person.

Forced Outage: The shutdown of a generating unit, transmission line or other facility, for emergency reasons or a condition in which the generating equipment is unavailable for load due to unanticipated breakdown.  [DOE Glossary of Electricity Terms]

FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name): The FQDN is the full name of a system, rather than just its hostname.

Fractional T1: A service aimed at customers who don't need all 24 channels of a full T1 line. Fractional T1 service offers the use of one or more channels. The customers, then, pay only for the channels they use. 

Frame Relay: An ITU-T recommendation (I.122) and ANSI standard (T1S1). Frame relay is an ISDN packet-mode bearer service that defines a user-to-network interface. The two main benefits are bandwidth on demand and integrated access. The standard currently addresses data communications speeds up to 44 Mbps (T-3 Line) over permanent virtual circuits. By reducing the network functions performed, frame relay takes advantage of more robust physical facilities to improve throughput.

Freenet: An organization to provide free Internet access to people in a certain area, usually through public libraries.

Freeware: Software that can be used and distributed for free. Freeware may still be copyrighted and the author's rights should always be honored.

Frequency Control - Control taking place in the power system, meant to maintain the stable value of frequency or reduce the deviation of the synchronous time from the astronomic one down to the limits allowed by the IRiESP. The synchronous time ts is defined by the following formula: �ç = dt t f

FSK (Frequency-Shift Keying): The earliest modems used a technique known as Frequency-Shift Keying (FSK) to represent digital data. FSK devices, such as the Bell 103 modem, used one tone (1070Hz) for zeros and another tone (1270Hz) for 1's.

FTAM: File Transfer, Access and Management. Compare with FTP (File Transport Protocol).

FTP (File Transport Protocol): In TCP/IP, an application layer protocol used to copy files from one computer to another. Defined in RFC959 and updates in RFC2228, RFC2640, and RFC2773.

Full Duplex Mode: A transmission mode indicating that both ends of a communications link can transmit data simultaneously.

Futures Market: Arrangement through a contract for the delivery of a commodity at a future time and at a price specified at the time of purchase. The price is based on an auction or market basis. This is a standardized, exchange-traded, and government regulated hedging mechanism.  [DOE Glossary of Electricity Terms]