Also known as: NIC, network adapter, network card
A network interface card (NIC, or network adapter) is the hardware that connects a computer to a network, turning the machine’s data into electrical, optical, or radio signals and back again.1
Overview
A NIC handles the lowest layers of networking: framing data into packets, putting them on the medium, and pulling incoming frames off it. Each NIC carries a globally unique MAC address burned in at manufacture, which identifies it on the local link. Adapters come as wired Ethernet ports, Wi-Fi radios, or fiber interfaces, and may be a discrete card in a PCI Express slot, a USB dongle, or — most commonly today — circuitry integrated onto the motherboard or system-on-a-chip.
Where it fits
The NIC is where a host meets the rest of the network; an IP address is assigned to it, and a switch or router sees it by its MAC address. In a GopherTrunk deployment a small capture node — say a Raspberry Pi by the antenna — uses its built-in NIC (wired or Wi-Fi) to stream decoded calls back to a server for storage.
Sources
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Network interface controller — Wikipedia, on the adapter that connects a computer to a network. ↩