Channel

In telecommunications networking, a communications channel acts as both a physical transmission medium (ex. the physical connection between initiating and terminating nodes of a circuit) or as a path for conveying signals and data from one point to another (ex. electrical or electromagnetic signals). Channels are used to convey signal information from a sender to a receiver. A channel’s maximum capacity for transmitting information is measured in several ways, most popularly by bandwidth or data rate. A channel model can be either digital or analog, with transmitted messages modeled as either a digital or an analog signal. Channels can also be shared between multiple nodes instead of point-to-point communications terminals as well.