Editing Telecommunications link (section)

{{Short description|Communication channel between two or more devices}}
{{Use British English|date=April 2020}}
In a [[telecommunications network]], a '''link''' is a [[communication channel]] that connects two or more devices for the purpose of [[data transmission]]. The link may be a dedicated [[Data link|physical link]] or a [[virtual circuit]] that uses one or more physical links or shares a physical link with other telecommunications links.

A telecommunications link is generally based on one of several types of information transmission paths such as those provided by [[communication satellite]]s, terrestrial [[radio communications]] infrastructure and [[computer network]]s to connect two or more points.

The term ''link'' is widely used in computer networking to refer to the communications facilities that connect [[Node (networking)|nodes]] of a network.<ref name="atis">{{cite web|url=http://www.atis.org/glossary/definition.aspx?id=4188|title=network topology|author=ATIS committee PRQC|publisher=[[Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions]]|work=ATIS Telecom Glossary 2007|access-date=2008-10-10|archive-date=2018-08-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180803014106/http://www.atis.org/glossary/definition.aspx?id=4188|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Sometimes the communications facilities that provide the communication channel that constitutes a link are also included in the definition of ''link''.