Terminal (telecommunication)

For other uses, see Terminal (disambiguation).

In the context of telecommunications, a terminal is a device which is capable of communicating over a line. Examples of terminals are telephones, fax machines, and network devices - printers, work stations, routers in a VoIP network.

Many computers use a serial access program to communicate with other computers via telephone line or serial cable, thus emulating a computer terminal. HyperTerminal is the most widely distributed terminal emulator, if not the most widely used.

When the first Macintosh was released, a program called MacTerminal was used to communicate with many computers, including the IBM PC.

Dec Terminal was one of the first Terminal programs for the popular Altair.