General Reference Database (GRD)

Everything in this database has been verified by THNC employees and has been written on three levels. We hope that one of these will help you feel comfortable and maximize your understanding. In the future, you will find definitions of terms and protocols, self-help sections for every type of home network installation. You can also retrieve information generic to a particular industry or broaden your searches for all industries. And we provide Help for Keyword Searches.

Everything in the GRD is stored on THNC’s server. This way, we retain control over content. We will identify reliable sources of information. We will bring together pertinent and timely descriptions from many scientific and industrial organizations.

This service database has two principle uses.

The first will be a source of information for personal research. Some people will prefer to search for information on their own, using keyword techniques and other means within GRD. They will read each article, perhaps going back and forth between experience levels to maximize their learning.

The second will be the source of information for those that prefer a more structured approach. THNC will prepare Educational Presentations, each covering a portion of a topic in home networking. We will have groups of employees researching the latest developments in each industry, while other groups are preparing new EPs. We are planning to create series of EPs to help people move from beginning levels of experience on through advanced levels.

GRD has been created to show three levels — each to be written for different experiential levels. Since each of us has a starting level of experience about every topic, we hope that one of these three levels — beginner, intermediate, advanced — matches where you are right now. This feature of GRD may be the most compelling reason for people to join THNC. Here will be thousands of entries about many, many topics, all of which have been written in three experiential levels. And here will be the ability for people to educate themselves about every home networking topic important to you.

We are still developing these techniques. If you choose a particular topic, you may search GRD for significant keywords (see the following section). You may also use internal cataloging identifiers that link related articles together. Using parts of these identifiers, you might choose to find all articles on one topic. You may also use ordinal numbers to study articles in the order that they were prepared.

Meaningful searches of the GRD can be developed using the Category check boxes and the Search field. You might widen your search for all of the industries within a Category or narrow it using one or more industries within that Category. You might use Boolean operators to include or exclude terms. Since each GRD entry may apply to several types of industries, your choice of boxes may produce a range of results. When you use none of the Category check boxes, you will search the entire database. There is also Help for Keyword Searches.