Host Controller - Host Adapter - Host Bus Adapter (HBA)
- connects a computer system bus which acts as the host system to a network device and/or a storage device
- the terms are primarily used to refer to devices for connecting SCSI, SAS, NVMe, Fibre Channel and SATA devices
- the term network interface controller (NIC) is used purely to connect to computer networks (nothing else)
- the term converged network adapter (CNA) combines both NIC and HBA
- can be either:
- integrated in the motherboard
- separate expansion card