In providing access to a database for remote users or in organizing collaborative database creation among different partners, the database operator will find himself involved, one way or the other, in the business of computer telecommunications. While he will normally have the assistance of computer personnel skilled in teleprocessing, and will be able to call upon the advice of telecommunications and network managers, he will need some appreciation of the basic elements of modern methods of data communications. It is the aim of this chapter to provide such a background, to suggest sources which can provide more detail for those who wish it without too deep an immersion into computer-telecommunications technology, and last but not least, to translate some of the computer-telecommunications jargon to which the database operator and the database user will necessarily be exposed in their joint activity.