NIC means Network Interface Card
A network card is required to allow a computer to be part of a computing system. On an old computer it is an extra plug-in card, but with a modern computer it is often part of the motherboard. This network card is often aagegeven with the abbreviation NIC. Often, the abbreviation also contains numbers (10/100, or 10/100/1000), which is the speed in megabits per second that the card can accommodate. The most widely used network card is of the Ethernet type, known (large) manufacturers of network cards are: Intel, 3com, Linksys, and Realtek.