E

eDirectory

A standards-compliant directory services system created by Novell. eDirectory was originally implemented as NDS in versions of NetWare up to 5.0.

EIA (Electronic Industries Association)

A group that specifies electrical transmission standards.

EISA (Extended Industry Standard Architecture)

The successor to the ISA standard. EISA provides a 32-bit bus interface that is used in PCs.

EMI (electromagnetic interference)

External interference of electromagnetic signals that causes a reduction of data integrity and increased error rates in a transmission medium.

encapsulation

A technique that is used by layered protocols in which a layer adds header information to the protocol data unit from the layer above.

encryption

The modification of data for security purposes prior to transmission so that it is not comprehendable without the decoding method.

ERD (emergency repair disk)

A floppy disk that contains security files and resource configurations that are used for recovery when a Windows NT/2000 operating system becomes corrupt.

ESD (electrostatic discharge)

A condition that is created when two objects of dissimilar electrical charge come into contact with each other. The result is that a charge from the object with the higher electrical charge discharges itself into the object with the lower-level charge. This discharge can be extremely harmful to computer components and circuit boards.

Ethernet

The most common LAN technology. Ethernet can be implemented using coaxial, twisted-pair, or fiber-optic cable. Ethernet uses the CSMA/CD media access method and has various implementation standards.

Event Viewer

A troubleshooting tool that is available in both Windows NT and Windows 2000 systems. On Windows NT, the Event Viewer provides three logs that record system information: the System log, the Security log, and the Application log. More logs are included in the Windows 2000 version.

EXT2

The default file system used in Linux systems.