A dock provides a physical cradle or a single cable connection that links a laptop, tablet, or test instrument to external power and a suite of peripherals. It acts as a port replicator, breaking out a high-bandwidth connection into separate video, USB, audio, and network interfaces.
Heard on the job
Drop the tablet into the dock so it can charge and sync the field data over the wired network.
Related terms
Docking station
A desktop hub that expands a single connection from a laptop into multiple peripheral ports.
Dock connector
A proprietary or standardized multi-pin port used to mate a mobile device with a base station.
Passthrough
A connection or mode that routes a signal directly from an input to an output without altering it.