One plug, every country
You buy a cable in one shop and plug it into a socket made by another company. It just works. A website made in one country opens on a phone from another.
This is not luck. Groups of experts write standards, and makers follow them.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can match a standards body to the kind of standard it sets.
Key words
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Standard | an agreed way of making or doing something |
| Protocol | an agreed set of rules for how devices talk |
| Compatible | able to work together |
| Accessibility | making things usable by people with disabilities |
| Network | computers and devices linked together |
| Ethernet | the usual wired way to link devices on a network |
| Cabling | the wires that link network equipment |
| Payment card | a debit or credit card |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Starter: last lesson
Have a go
Starter: last lesson
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Standards let different things work together
A standard is an agreed way to do something. Without them, a cable from one maker might not fit a socket from another.
Standards help with three things: things are compatible, they are safe, and they are of good quality. Eight groups matter in this course.
Eight sources of standards
| Body | What it sets | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ISO, International Organization for Standardization | Standards in many fields worldwide | ISO 27001 for information security |
| W3C, World Wide Web Consortium | Standards for the web | HTML and CSS |
| WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines | Rules to make web content accessible | Text alternatives for images, enough colour contrast |
| IETF, Internet Engineering Task Force | Internet protocols, written as RFCs | The rules for IP and HTTP |
| EIA/TIA | Cabling and telecoms standards | Category 6 cable rules |
| BS, British Standards, from BSI | UK standards | BS 7671, the UK wiring rules |
| IEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers | Electrical and network standards | Ethernet and Wi-Fi |
| PCI SSC, Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council | Rules for taking card payments safely | PCI DSS |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Check
Have a go
Check
4 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.