a cross between a method and a counting semaphore

Data communication over a basic telephone line .

Asynchronous communications is a form of communication by which two applications communicate independently, without requiring both to be simultaneously available for communications. A process sends a request and may or may not be idle while waiting for a response. It is a popular non-blocking communications style. Most popular data communications protocols (IP, ATM, Frame Relay, etc) rely on asynchronous methods.

See Asynchronous Transmission.

A mode of data transmission wherein the occurrence of each character is not related to a fixed time frame of reference. Compare with synchronous transmission.

Abbreviation for Asynchronous