Negative acknowledgement




1. <character> (NAK) The mnemonic for ASCII character 21.

Sometimes used as the response to receipt of a corrupted packet of information.

Opposite of acknowledgement.

2. <communications> (NAK) Any message transmitted to indicate that some data has been received incorrectly, for example it may have a checksum or message length error.

A NAK message allows the sender to distinguish a message which has been received in a corrupted state from one which is not received at all.

An alternative is to use only ACK messages, in which case the non-receipt of an ACK after a certain time is counted as a NAK but gives no information about the integrity of the communications channel.

See also ACK.



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NEC
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neep-neep
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NAK
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neophilia
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