Out-of-band
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Relating to activity outside of a defined telecommunications frequency band.
"In this additional spectrum, in-band signaling was sent down the wires outside the frequencies used for conversation. Actually, the signals were sent across the 3,500- and 3,700-Hz frequencies. Although these worked and were not in the talk path (out of the band) they were limited in the number of tones that could be sent."
- 2 Relating to communication on a different channel, or by a different method, from that of the primary communication channel. broadly
- 3 Relating to communication, such as identity verification, via a method other than the primary means of accessing the software.
"One great way of solving the phishing problem is doing out-of-band authentication."
- 4 Referring to a value returned by a function that is not in its natural range of return values, but rather signals an exception.
Synonyms
All synonymsAntonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"In this additional spectrum, in-band signaling was sent down the wires outside the frequencies used for conversation. Actually, the signals were sent across the 3,500- and 3,700-Hz frequencies. Although these worked and were not in the talk path (out of the band) they were limited in the number of tones that could be sent."
Related phrases
More for "out-of-band"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.