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- 1xRTT -- (Single Carrier (1x) Radio Transmission
Technology)
- A wireless communications
protocol used for connections to networks by devices such as
laptop computers. 1xRTT has the capability of providing data transfer speeds
of up to 144 thousand bps. 1xRTT is a built on top of another widely
used protocol, CDMA and is also called CMDA2000.
See also: bps, CDMA, Network, Protocol
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- ADN -- (Advanced Digital Network)
- Usually refers to a 56Kbps
leased-line.
See also: bps, Leased
Line
- ADSL -- (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line)
- A DSL line where the
upload speed is different from the download speed. Usually the download speed
is much greater.
See also: Download, DSL, SDSL, Upload
- Anonymous FTP
-
See also: FTP
- Applet
- A small Java program
that can be embedded in an HTML page. Applets differ from full-fledged
Java applications in that they are not allowed to access certain resources on
the local computer, such as files and serial devices (modems, printers, etc.),
and are prohibited from communicating with most other computers across a
network. The common rule is that an applet can only make an Internet
connection to the computer from which the applet was sent.
See also: HTML, Java
- Application Server
- Server
software that manages one or more other pieces of software in a way that makes
the managed software available over a network, usually to a Web server.
By having a piece of software manage other software packages it is possible to
use resources like memory and database access more efficiently than if each of
the managed packages responded directly to requests.
See also: Server
- Archie
- A tool (software) for finding
files stored on anonymous FTP sites. You need to know the exact file
name or a substring of it. By 1999 Archie had been almost completely
replaced by web-based search engines.
Back when FTP was the
main way people moved files over the Internet archie was quite popular.
See also: FTP
- ARPANet -- (Advanced Research Projects Agency
Network)
- The precursor to the
Internet. Developed in the late 60's and early 70's by the US
Department of Defense as an experiment in wide-area-networking to connect
together computers that were each running different system so that people at
one location could use computing resources from another location.
See also: Internet
(Upper case I), Network, WAN
- ASCII -- (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange)
- This is the defacto world-wide
standard for the code numbers used by computers to represent all the upper and
lower-case Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. There are 128 standard
ASCII codes each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number:
0000000 through 1111111.
- Atom
- An evolving protocol for
syndication and sharing of content.
Atom is being developed as a
succesor to and improvement over RSS and is more complex than RSS while
offering support for additional features such digital signatures, geographic
location of author, possibly security/encryption, licensing, etc.
Like
RSS, Atom is an XML-based specification.
See also: RSS, XML
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- Backbone
- A high-speed line or series
of connections that forms a major pathway within a network. The term is
relative as a backbone in a small network will likely be much smaller
than many non-backbone lines in a large network.
See also: Network
- Bandwidth
- How much stuff you can send
through a connection. Usually measured in bits-per-second. A full page of
English text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move about 57,000 bits in
one second. Full-motion full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000
bits-per-second, depending on compression.
See also: Bit, bps, T-1
- Baud
- In common usage the baud rate of
a modem is how many bitsit can send or receive per second.
Technically, baud is the number of times per second that the carrier signal
shifts value - for example a 1200 bit-per-second modem actually runs at 300
baud, but it moves 4 bits per baud (4 x 300= 1200 bits per second).
See also: Bit, Modem
- BBS -- (Bulletin Board System)
- A computerized meeting and
announcement system that allows people to carry on discussions, upload and
download files, and make announcements without the people being connected to
the computer at the same time. In the early 1990's there were many thousands
(millions?) of BBS?s around the world, most are very small, running on a
single IBM clone PC with 1 or 2 phone lines. Some are very large and the line
between a BBS and a system like AOL gets crossed at some point, but it is not
clearly drawn.
- Binary
- Information consisting
entirely of ones and zeros. Also, commonly used to refer to files that are not
simply text files, e.g. images.
See also: MIME, UUENCODE
- Binhex -- (BINary HEXadecimal)
- A method for converting
non-text files (non-ASCII) into ASCII. This is needed because Internet
e-mail can only handle ASCII.
See also: ASCII, MIME, UUENCODE
- Bit -- (Binary DigIT)
- A single digit number in base-2,
in other words, either a 1 or a zero. The smallest unit of computerized data.
Bandwidthis usually measured in bits-per-second.
See also: Bandwidth, Bit, bps, Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte
- BITNET -- (Because It's Time NETwork (or Because
It's There NETwork))
- A network of
educational sites separate from the Internet, but e-mail is freely exchanged
between BITNET and the Internet. Listservs®, a popular form of
e-mail discussion groups, originated on BITNET. At its peak (the late 1980's
and early 1990's) BITNET machines were usually mainframes, often running IBM's
MVS operating system. BITNET is probably the only international network that
is shrinking.
See also: Internet
(Upper case I), Listserv ®,
Network
- Blog -- (weB LOG)
- A blog is basically a journal
that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is
"blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically
updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical
background to update and maintain the blog.
Postings on a blog are
almost always arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions
featured most prominently.
- bps -- (Bits-Per-Second)
- A measurement of how fast data is
moved from one place to another. A 56K modem can move about 57,000 bits
per second.
See also: Bandwidth, Bit
- Browser
- A Client program
(software) that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.
See also: Client, Server, URL, WWW
- BTW -- (By The Way)
- A shorthand appended to a comment
written in an online forum.
See also: IMHO
- Byte
- A set of Bits that represent a
single character. Usually there are 8 Bits in a Byte, sometimes more,
depending on how the measurement is being made.
See also: Bit
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- CATP -- (Caffeine Access Transport Protocol)
- Common method of moving caffeine
across Wide Area Networks such as the Internet
CATP was first used at the Binary Cafe in Cybertown and quickly spread
world-wide.
There are reported problems with short-circuits and rust and decaffinated
beverages were not supprted until version 1.5.3
See also: Internet
(Upper case I), IRC, WAN
- CDMA -- (Code Division Multiple Access)
- A protocol for wireless
data and voice communication, CMDA is widely used in cellphone networks, but
also in many other data communications systems. CDMA uses a technique called
"Spread Spectrum" whereby the data being transmitted is spread across multiple
radio frequencies, making more efficent use of available radio spectrum. There
are a number of additional protocols built on top of CDMA, such as
1xRTT (also called CMDA2000).
See also: 1xRTT, Protocol
- Certificate Authority
- An issuer of
Security Certificates used in SSL connections.
See also: SSL
- CGI -- (Common Gateway Interface)
- A set of rules that describe how
a Web Server communicates with another piece of software on the
same machine, and how the other piece of software (the ?CGI program?) talks to
the web server. Any piece of software can be a CGI program if it handles input
and output according to the CGI standard.
See also: Server, WWW
- cgi-bin
- The most common name of a
directory on a web server in which CGIprograms are stored.
See also: CGI
- Client
- A software program that is
used to contact and obtain data from a Server software program on
another computer, often across a great distance. EachClient program is
designed to work with one or more specific kinds of Server programs,
and each Server requires a specific kind of Client. A Web
Browser is a specific kind of Client.
See also: Browser, Client, Server
- co-location
- Most often used to refer
to having a server that belongs to one person or group physically
located on an Internet-connected network that belongs to another
person or group. Usually this is done because the server owner wants their
machine to be on a high-speed Internet connection and/or they do not want the
security risks of having the server on thier own network.
See also: Internet
(Upper case I), Network, Server
- Cookie
- The most common meaning of
"Cookie" on the Internet refers to a piece of information sent by a Web
Server to a Web Browser that the Browser software is expected to
save and to send back to the Server whenever the browser makes additional
requests from the Server.
Depending on the type of Cookie used, and the Browsers' settings, the
Browser may accept or not accept the Cookie, and may save the Cookie for
either a short time or a long time.
Cookies might contain information such as login or registration
information, online "shopping cart" information, user preferences, etc.
When a Server receives a request from a Browser that includes a Cookie, the
Server is able to use the information stored in the Cookie. For example, the
Server might customize what is sent back to the user, or keep a log of
particular users' requests.
Cookies are usually set to expire after a predetermined amount of time and
are usually saved in memory until the Browser software is closed down, at
which time they may be saved to disk if their "expire time" has not been
reached.
Cookies do not read your hard drive and send your life story to the CIA,
but they can be used to gather more information about a user than would be
possible without them.
See also: Browser, Server
- CSS -- (Cascading Style Sheet)
- A standard for specifying the
appearance of text and other elements. CSS was developed for use with
HTML in Web pages but is also used in other situations, notably
in applications built using XPFE. CSS is typically used to provide a
single "library" of styles that are used over and over throughout a large
number of related documents, as in a web site. A CSS file might specify that
all numbered lists are to appear in italics. By changing that single
specification the look of a large number of documents can be easily changed.
See also: HTML, Web page, XPFE
- Cyberpunk
- Cyberpunk was originally a
cultural sub-genre of science fiction taking place in a not-so-distant,
dystopian, over-industrialized society. The term grew out of the work of
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and has evolved into a cultural label
encompassing many different kinds of human, machine, and punk attitudes. It
includes clothing and lifestyle choices as well.
See also: Cyberspace
- Cyberspace
- Term originated by author
William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer the word Cyberspace is
currently used to describe the whole range of information resources available
through computer networks.
See also: Cyberpunk
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- DHTML -- (Dynamic HyperText Markup Language)
- DHTML refers to web
pages that use a combination of HTML, JavaScript, and
CSS to create features such as letting the user drag items around on
the web page, some simple kinds of animation, and many more.
See also: CSS, HTML, JavaScript,
Web
page
- Digerati
- The digital version of
literati, it is a reference to a vague cloud of people seen to be
knowledgeable, hip, or otherwise in-the-know in regardsto the digital
revolution.
- DNS -- (Domain Name System)
- The Domain Name System is the
system that translates Internet domain names into IP numbers. A
"DNS Server" is a server that performs this kind of translation.
See also: Domain
Name, IP Number,
Server
- Domain Name
- The unique name that
identifies an Internet site. Domain Names always have 2 or more parts,
separated by dots. The part on the left is the most specific, and the part on
the right is the most general. A given machine may have more than one Domain
Name but a given Domain Name points to only one machine. For example, the
domain names:
matisse.net
mail.matisse.net
workshop.matisse.net
can all refer to the same machine, but each domain name can refer to no
more than one machine.
Usually, all of the machines on a given Network will have the same thing as
the right-hand portion of their Domain Names (matisse.net in the examples
above). It is also possible for a Domain Name to exist but not be connected to
an actual machine. This is often done so that a group or business can have an
Internet e-mail address without having to establish a real Internet site. In
these cases, some real Internet machine must handle the mail on behalf of the
listed Domain Name.
See also: IP Number,
TLD
- Download
- Transferring data (usually a
file) from a another computer to the computer you are are using. The opposite
of upload.
See also: Upload
- DSL -- (Digital Subscriber Line)
- A method for moving data over
regular phone lines. A DSL circuit is much faster than a regular phone
connection, and the wires coming into the subscriber's premises are the same
(copper) wires used for regular phone service. A DSL circuit must be
configured to connect two specific locations, similar to a leased line
(howeverr a DSL circuit is not a leased line.
A common configuration of DSL allows downloads at speeds of up to 1.544
megabits (not megabytes) per second, and uploads at speeds of 128 kilobits per
second. This arrangement is called ADSL: Asymmetric Digital Subscriber
Line.
Another common configuration is symmetrical: 384 Kilobits per second in
both directions.
In theory ADSL allows download speeds of up to 9 megabits per second and
upload speeds of up to 640 kilobits per second.
DSL is now a popular alternative to Leased Lines and ISDN, being faster
than ISDN and less costly than traditional Leased Lines.
See also: ADSL, Bandwidth, ISDN, Leased
Line, SDSL
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- Email -- (Electronic Mail)
- Messages, usually text, sent
from one person to another via computer. E-mail can also be sent automatically
to a large number of addresses.
See also: Listserv ®,
SMTP
- Ethernet
- A very common method of
networking computers in a LAN.
There is more than one type of Ethernet. By 2001 the standard type was
"100-BaseT" which can handle up to about 100,000,000 bits-per-second and can
be used with almost any kind of computer.
See also: Bandwidth, FDDI, LAN
- Extranet
- An intranet that is
accesible to computers that are not hysically part of a companys' own private
network, but that is not accessible to the general public, for example
to allow vendors and business partners to access a company web site.
Often an intranet will make use of a Virtual Private Network. (VPN.)
See also: Intranet, Network, VPN
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- FAQ -- (Frequently Asked Questions)
- FAQs are documents that list and
answerthe most common questions on a particular subject. There are hundreds of
FAQs on subjects as diverse as Pet Grooming and Cryptography. FAQs are usually
written by people who have tired of answering the same question over and over.
- FDDI -- (Fiber Distributed Data Interface)
- A standard for transmitting data
on optical fiber cables at a rate of around 100,000,000 bits-per-second (10
times as fast as 10-BaseTEthernet, about twice as fast as T-3).
See also: Ethernet, T-3
- Finger
- An Internet software tool for
locating people on other Internet sites. Finger is also sometimes used to give
access to non-personal information, but the most common use is to see if a
person has an account at a particular Internet site. Many sites do not allow
incoming Finger requests, but many do.
- Fire Wall
- A combination of hardware
and software that separates a Network into two or more parts for
security purposes.
See also: Network
- Flame
- Originally, "flame" meant to
carry forth in a passionate manner in the spirit of honorable debate. Flames
most often involved the use of flowery language and flaming well was an art
form. More recently flame has come to refer to any kind of derogatory comment
no matter how witless or crude.
See also: Flame
War
- Flame War
- When an online discussion
degenerates into a series of personal attacks against the debators, rather
than discussion of their positions. A heated exchange.
See also: Flame
- FTP -- (File Transfer Protocol)
- A very common method of moving
files between two Internet sites.
FTP is a way to login to another Internet site for the purposes of
retrieving and/or sending files. There are many Internet sites that have
established publicly accessible repositories of material that can be obtained
using FTP, by logging in using the account name "anonymous", thus these sites
are called "anonymous ftp servers".
FTP was invented and in wide use long before the advent of the World
Wide Web and originally was always used from a text-only interface.
See also: Login, WWW
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- Gateway
- The technical meaning is a
hardware or software set-up that translates between two dissimilar protocols,
for example America Online has a gateway that translates between its internal,
proprietary e-mail format and Internet e-mail format. Another, sloppier
meaning of gateway is to describe any mechanism for providing access to
another system, e.g. AOL might be called a gateway to the Internet.
- GIF -- (Graphic Interchange Format)
- A common format for image files,
especially suitable for images containing large areas of the same color. GIF
format files of simple images are often smaller than the same file would be if
stored in JPEG format, but GIF format does not store photographic
images as well as JPEG.
See also: JPEG, PNG
- Gigabyte
- 1000 or 1024
Megabytes, depending on who is measuring.
See also: Byte
- Gopher
- Invented at the University of
Minnesota in 1993 just before the Web, gopher was a widely successful
method of making menus of material available over the Internet.
Gopher was designed to be much easier to use than FTP, while still
using a text-only interface.
Gopher is a Client and Server style program, whichrequires
that the user have a Gopher Client program. Although Gopher spread
rapidly across the globe in only a couple of years, it has been largely
supplanted by Hypertext, also known as WWW (World Wide Web). There are
still thousands of Gopher Servers on the Internet and we can expect
they will remain for a while.
See also: Client, FTP, WWW
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- hit
- As used in reference to the World
Wide Web, ?hit? means a single request from a web browser for a single
item from a web server; thus in order for a web browser to display a
page that contains 3 graphics, 4 ?hits? would occur at the server: 1 for the
HTML page, and one for each of the 3 graphics.
See also: Browser, HTML, Server
- Home Page (or Homepage)
- Several
meanings. Originally, the web page that your browser is set to
use when it starts up. The more common meaning refers to the main web page for
a business, organization, person or simply the main page out of a collection
of web pages, e.g. "Check out so-and-so's new Home Page."
See also: Browser, WWW
- Host
- Any computer on a network
that is a repository for services available to other computers on the
network. It is quite common to have one host machine provide several
services, such as SMTP (email) and HTTP (web).
See also: Network, SMTP
- HTML -- (HyperText Markup Language)
- The coding language used to
create Hypertext documents for use on the World Wide Web. HTML
looks a lot like old-fashioned typesetting code, where you surround a block of
text with codes that indicate how it should appear.
The "hyper" in Hypertext comes from the fact that in HTML you can specify
that a block of text, or an image, is linked to another file on the Internet.
HTML files are meant to be viewed using a "Web Browser".
HTML is loosely based on a more comprehensive system for markup called
SGML.
See also: Browser, Hypertext, WWW
- HTTP -- (HyperText Transfer Protocol)
- The protocol for moving
hypertextfiles across the Internet. Requires a HTTP
client program on one end, and an HTTP server program on the
other end. HTTP is the most important protocol used in the World Wide Web
(WWW).
See also: Client, Hypertext, Server, WWW
- Hypertext
- Generally, any text that
contains links to other documents - words or phrases in the document that can
be chosen by a reader and which cause another document to be retrieved and
displayed.
See also: HTML, HTTP
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- IMAP -- (Internet Message Access Protocol)
- IMAP is gradually replacing
POP as the main protocol used by email clients in communicating
with email servers.
Using IMAP an email client program can not only retrieve email but can also
manipulate message stored on the server, without having to actually retrieve
the messages. So messages can be deleted, have their status changed, multiple
mail boxes can be managed, etc.
IMAP is defined in RFC 2060
See also: Client, Email, POP, RFC, Server
- IMHO -- (In My Humble Opinion)
- A shorthand appended to a
comment written in an online forum, IMHO indicates that the writer is aware
that they areexpressing a debatable view, probably on a subject already under
discussion. One of many such shorthands in common use online, especially in
discussion forums.
- internet (Lower case i)
- Any time you
connect 2 or more networks together, you have an internet - as in
inter-national or inter-state.
See also: Internet
(Upper case I), Network
- Internet (Upper case I)
- The vast
collection of inter-connected networks that are connected using the
TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from the ARPANET of the late
60's and early 70's.
The Internet connects tens of thousands of independent networks into a vast
global internet and is probably the largest Wide Area Network in
the world.
See also: internet
(Lower case i), Network, WAN
- Intranet
- A private network
inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that you
would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use.
Compare with extranet.
See also: Extranet, internet
(Lower case i), Internet
(Upper case I)
- IP Number -- (Internet Protocol Number)
- Sometimes called a dotted
quad. A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g.
165.113.245.2
Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP number - if a
machine does not have an IP number, it is not really on the Internet. Many
machines (especially servers) also have one or more Domain Names that are
easier for people to remember.
See also: Domain
Name, Server, TCP/IP
- IPv4 -- (Internet Protocol, version 4)
- The most widley used version of
the Internet Protocol (the "IP" part of TCP/IP.)
IPv4 allows for
a theoretical maximum of approximately four billion IP Numbers
(technically 232), but the actual number is far less due to
inefficiencies in the way blocks of numbers are handled by networks. The
gradual adoption of IPv6 will solve this problem.
See also: IP Number,
IPv6, Network, Protocol, TCP/IP
- IPv6 -- (Internet Protocol, version 6)
- The successor to IPv4.
Already deployed in some cases and gradually spreading, IPv6 provides a huge
number of available IP Numbers - over a sextillion addresses
(theoretically 2128). IPv6 allows every device on the planet to
have its own IP Number.
See also: IP Number,
IPv4, Network, Protocol, TCP/IP
- IRC -- (Internet Relay Chat)
- Basically a huge multi-user live
chat facility. There are a number of major IRC servers around the world
which are linked to each other. Anyone can create a channel and anything that
anyone types in a given channel is seen by all others in the channel. Private
channels can (and are) created for multi-person conference calls.
See also: Server
- ISDN -- (Integrated Services Digital Network)
- Basically a way to move more
dataover existing regular phone lines. ISDN is available to much of the USA
and in most markets it is priced very comparably to standard analog phone
circuits. It can provide speeds of roughly 128,000 bits-per-second over
regular phone lines. In practice, most people will be limited to 56,000or
64,000 bits-per-second.
Unlike DSL, ISDN can be used to connect to many different locations,
one at a time, just like a regular telephone call, as long the other location
also has ISDN.
See also: DSL
- ISP -- (Internet Service Provider)
- An institution that provides
access to the Internet in some form, usually for money.
- IT -- (Information Technology)
- A very general term referring to
the entire field of Information Technology - anything from computer hardware
to programming to network management. Most medium and large size companies
have IT Departments.
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- Java
- Java is a network-friendly
programming language invented by Sun Microsystems.
Java is often used to build large, complex systems that involve several
different computers interacting across networks, for example transaction
processing systems.
Java is also becoming popular for creating programs that run in small
electronic devicws, such as mobile telephones.
A very common use of Java is to create programs that can be safely
downloaded to your computer through the Internet and immediately run without
fear of viruses or other harm to your computer or files. Using small Java
programs (called "Applets"), Web pages can include functions such as
animations,calculators, and other fancy tricks.
See also: Applet, JDK
- JavaScript
- JavaScript is a
programming language that is mostly used in web pages, usually to add features
that make the web page more interactive. When JavaScript is included in an
HTML file it relies upon the browser to interpret the JavaScript. When
JavaScript is combined with Cascading Style Sheets(CSS), and later
versions of HTML (4.0 and later) the result is often called DHTML.
See also: HTML
- JDK -- (Java Development Kit)
- A software development package
from Sun Microsystems that implements the basic set of tools needed to write,
test and debugJava applications and applets
See also: Applet, Java
- JPEG -- (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
- JPEG is most commonly mentioned
as a format for image files. JPEG format is preferred to the GIF format
for photographic images as opposed to line art or simple logo art.
See also: GIF, PNG
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- Kilobyte
- A thousand bytes. Actually,
usually 1024 (210) bytes.
See also: Byte
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- LAN -- (Local Area Network)
- A computer network limited to the
immediate area, usually the same building or floor of a building.
See also: Network, VPN, WAN
- Leased Line
- Refers to line such as a
telephone line or fiber-optic cable that is rented for exclusive 24-hour,
7-days-a-week use from your location to another location. The highest speed
data connections require a leased line.
See also: DSL, ISDN
- Linux
- A widely used Open Source
Unix-like operating system. Linux was first released by its inventor Linus
Torvalds in 1991. There are versions of Linux for almost every available type
of computer hardware from desktop machines to IBM mainframes. The inner
workings of Linux are open and available for anyone to examine and change as
long as they make their changes available to the public. This has resulted in
thousands of people working on various aspects of Linux and adaptation of
Linux for a huge variety of purposes, from servers to TV-recording boxes.
See also: Open
Source Software, Unix
- Listserv ®
- The most common kind
of maillist, "Listserv" is a registered trademark of L-Soft
international, Inc. Listservs originated on BITNET but they are now
common on the Internet.
See also: BITNET, Internet
(Upper case I), Maillist
- Login
- Noun or a verb.
Noun: The account name used to gain access to a computer system. Not a
secret (contrast with Password).
Verb: the act of connecting to a computer system by giving your credentials
(usually your "username" and "password")
See also: Password
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- Maillist
- (or Mailing List) A
(usually automated) system that allows people to send e-mail to one
address, whereupon their message is copied and sent to all of the other
subscribers to the maillist. In this way, people who have many different kinds
of e-mail access can participate in discussions together.
See also: Email, Listserv
®
- Megabyte
- A million bytes.
Actually, technically, 1024 kilobytes.
See also: Byte, Kilobyte
- Meta Tag
- A specific kind of
HTML tag that contains information not normally displayed to the user.
Meta tags contan information about the page itself, hence the name ("meta"
means "about this subject")
Typical uses of Meta tags are to include information for search
engines to help them better categorize a page.
You can see the Meta tags in a page if you view the pages' source code.
See also: HTML, Search
Engine, SEO
- MIME -- (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
- Originally a standard for
defining the types of files attached to standard Internet mail messages. The
MIME standard has come to be used in many situations where one cmputer
programs needs to communicate with another program about what kind of file is
being sent.
For example, HTML files have a MIME-type of text/html,
JPEG files are image/jpeg, etc.
See also: HTML, JPEG
- Mirror
- Generally speaking, "to
mirror" is to maintain an exact copy of something. Probably the most common
use of the term on the Internet refers to "mirror sites" which are web
sites, or FTP sites that maintain copies of material originated at
another location, usually in order to provide more widespread access to the
resource. For example, one site might create a library of software, and 5
other sites might maintain mirrors of that library.
See also: FTP, WWW
- Modem -- (MOdulator, DEModulator)
- A device that connects a
computer to a phone line. A telephone for a computer. A modem allows a
computer to talk to other computers through the phone system. Basically,
modems do for computers what a telephone does for humans.
- MOO -- (Mud, Object Oriented)
- One of several kinds of
multi-user role-playing environments.
See also: MUD
- Mosaic
- The first WWW browser
that was available for the Macintosh, Windows,and UNIX all with the same
interface. Mosaic really started the popularity of the Web. The source-code to
Mosaic was licensed by several companies and used to create many other web
browsers.
Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA), at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, in Illinois, USA.
The first version was released in late 1993.
See also: Browser, WWW
- MUD -- (Multi-User Dungeon or Dimension)
- A (usually text-based) multi-user
simulation environment. Some are purely for fun and flirting, others are used
for serious software development, or education purposes and all thatlies in
between. A significant feature of most MUDs is that users can create things
that stay after they leave and which other users can interact within their
absence, thus allowing a world to be built gradually and collectively.
See also: MOO
- MUSE -- (Multi-User Simulated Environment)
- One kind of MUD - usually with
little or no violence.
See also: MUD
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- Netiquette
- The etiquette on the
Internet.
- Netizen
- Derived from the term
citizen, referring to a citizen of the Internet,or someone who uses
networked resources. The term connotes civic responsibility and participation.
- Netscape
- A WWW Browser and the
name of a company. The Netscape (tm) browser was originally based on the
Mosaic program developed at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA).
See also: Mosaic
- Network
- Any time you connect 2 or
more computers together so that they can share resources, you have a computer
network. Connect 2 or more networks together and you have an internet.
See also: internet
(Lower case i)
- Newsgroup
- The name for discussion
groups on USENET.
See also: USENET
- NIC -- (Network Information Center)
- Generally, any office that
handles information for a network. The most famous of these on the Internet
was the InterNIC, which was where most new domain names were registered until
that process was decentralized to a number of private companies. Also means
"Network Interface card", which is the card in a computer that you plug a
network cable into.
See also: Domain
Name, Network
- NNTP -- (Network News Transport Protocol)
- The protocol used by
clientand server software to carry USENET postings back
and forth over a TCP/IP network. If you are using any of the
more common software such as Netscape, Nuntius, Internet Explorer, etc.
to participate in newsgroups then you are benefiting from an NNTP
connection.
See also: Client, Server, TCP/IP
- Node
- Any single computer connected to
a network.
See also: Network
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- Open Content
- Copyrighted information
(such as this Glossary) that is made available by the copyright owner to the
general public under license terms that allow reuse of the material, often
with the requirement (as with this Glossary) that the re-user grant the public
the same rights to the modified version that the re-user received from the
copyright owner.
Information that is in the Public Domain might also be considered a form of
Open Content.
See also: Open
Source Software
- Open Source Software
- Open Source
Software is software for which the underlying programming code is available to
the users so that they may read it, make changes to it, and build new versions
of the software incorporating their changes. There are many types of Open
Source Software, mainly differing in the licensing term under which (altered)
copies of the source code may (or must be) redistributed.
See also: Open
Content
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- Packet Switching
- The method used to
move data around on the Internet. In packet switching, all the data
coming out of a machine is broken up into chunks, each chunk has the address
of where it came from and where it is going. This enables chunks of data from
many different sources to co-mingle on the same lines, and be sorted and
directed along different routes by special machines along the way. This way
many people can use the same lines at the same time.
You might think of several caravans of trucks all using the same road
system to carry materials.
See also: Internet
(Upper case I), Router
- Password
- A code used to gain access
(login) to a locked system. Good passwords contain letters and
non-letters and are not simple combinations such as virtue7. A good
password might be:
5%df(29)
But don't use that one!
See also: Login
- PDF -- (Portable Document Format)
- A file format designed to enable
printing and viewing of documents with all their formatting (typefaces,
images, layout, etc.) appearing the same regardless of what operating system
is used, so a PDF document should look the same on Windows, Macintosh, linux,
OS/2, etc. The PDF format is based on the widely used Postcript
document-description language. Both PDF and Postscript were developed by the
Adobe Corporation.
- ping
- To check if a server is running.
From the sound that a sonar systems makes in movies, you know, when they are
searching for a submarine.
- Plug-in
- A (usually small) piece of
software that adds features to a larger piece of software. Common examples are
plug-ins for the Netscape® browser and web server. Adobe
Photoshop® also uses plug-ins.
See also: Browser, Server
- PNG -- (Portable Network Graphics)
- PNG is a graphics format
specifically designed for use on the World Wide Web. PNG enable compression of
images without any loss of quality, including high-resolution images. Another
important feature of PNG is that anyone may create software that works with
PNG images without paying any fees - the PNG standard is free of any licensing
costs.
See also: GIF, JPEG
- POP -- (Point of Presence, also Post Office
Protocol)
- Two commonly used
meanings:
Point of Presence and Post Office Protocol.
A Point of Presence usually means a city or location where a network can be
connected to, often with dial up phone lines. So if an Internet company says
they will soon have a POP in Belgrade, it means that they will soon have a
local phone number in Belgrade and/or a place where leased lines can connect
to their network.
A second meaning, Post Office Protocol refers to a way that e-mail
client software such as Eudora gets mail from a mail server.
When you obtain an account from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) you
almost always get a POP account with it, and it is this POP account that you
tell your e-mail software to use to get your mail. Another protocol called
IMAP is replacing POP for email.
See also: Client, Email, IMAP, ISP, Server
- Port
- 3 meanings. First and most
generally, a place where information goes into or out of a computer, or both.
E.g. the serial port on a personal computer is where a modem would be
connected.
On the Internet port often refers to a number that is part of a URL,
appearing after a colon (:) right after the domain name. Every service on an
Internet server listens on a particular port number on that server. Most
services have standard port numbers, e.g. Web servers normally listen on port
80. Services can also listen on non-standard ports, in which case the port
number must be specified in a URL when accessing the server, so you might see
a URL of the form:
gopher://peg.cwis.uci.edu:7000/
This shows a gopher server running on a non-standard port (the standard
gopher port is 70).
Finally, port also refers to translating a piece of software to bring it
from one type of computer system to another, e.g. to translate a Windows
program so that is will run on a Macintosh.
See also: URL
- Portal
- Usually used as a marketing
term to described a Web site that is or is intended to be the first place
people see when using the Web. Typically a "Portal site" has a catalog of web
sites, a search engine, or both. A Portal site may also offer email and other
service to entice people to use that site as their main "point of entry"
(hence "portal") to the Web.
- Posting
- A single message entered into
a network communications system.
- PPP -- (Point to Point Protocol)
- The most common protocol used to
connect home computers to the Internet over regular phone lines.
Most well known as a protocol that allows a computer to use a regular
telephone line and a modem to make TCP/IPconnections and thus be
really and truly on the Internet.
See also: Modem, SLIP, TCP/IP
- Protocol
- On the Internet "protocol"
usually refers to a set of rules that define an exact format for communication
between systems. For example the HTTP protocol defines the format for
communication between web browsers and web servers, the IMAP protocol
defines the format for communication between IMAP email servers and clients,
and the SSL protocol defines a format for encrypted communications over
the Internet.
Virtually all Internet protocls are defined in
RFC documents.
See also: FTP, HTTP, IMAP, POP, PPP, RFC, SLIP, SMTP, SNMP, SSL, TCP/IP, UDP
- Proxy Server
- A Proxy Server sits in
between a Client and the "real" Server that a Client is trying
to use. Client's are sometimes configured to use a Proxy Server, usually an
HTTP server. The clients makes all of it's requests from the Proxy
Server, which then makes requests from the "real" server and passes the result
back to the Client. Sometimes the Proxy server will store the results and give
a stored result instead of making a new one (to reduce use of a
Network). Proxy servers are commonly established on Local Area
Networks
See also: Client, HTTP, LAN, Network, Server
- PSTN -- (Public Switched Telephone Network)
- The regular old-fashioned
telephone system.
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- RDF -- (Resource Definition Framework)
- A set of rules (a sort of
language) for creating descriptions of information, especially information
available on the World Wide Web. RDF could be used to describe a
collection of books, or artists, or a collection of web pages as in the
RSS data format which uses RDF to create machine-readable summaries of
web sites.
RDF is also used in XPFE applications to define the relationships
between different collections of elements, for example RDF could be used to
define the relationship between the data in a database and the way that data
is displayed to a user.
See also: RSS, Web page, WWW, XML, XPFE, XUL
- RFC -- (Request For Comments)
- The name of the result and the
process for creating a standard on the Internet. New standards are
proposed and published on the Internet, as a Request For Comments. The
proposal is reviewed by the Internet Engineering Task Force
(http://www.ietf.org/), a consensus-building body that facilitates discussion,
and eventually a new standard is established, but the reference number/name
for the standard retains the acronym RFC, e.g. the official standard for
e-mail message formats is RFC 822.
- Router
- A special-purpose computer (or
software package) that handles the connection between 2 or more
Packet-Switched networks. Routers spend all their time looking at the
source and destination addresses of the packets passing through them
and deciding which route to send them on.
See also: Network, Packet
Switching
- RSS -- (Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary or
Real Simple Syndication)
- A commonly used protocol for
syndication and sharing of content, originally developed to facilitate the
syndication of news articles, now widely used to share the contents of
blogs.
RSS is an XML-based summary of a web site,
usually used for syndication and other kinds of content-sharing.
There
are RSS "feeds" which are sources of RSS information about web sites, and RSS
"readers" which read RSS feeds and display their content to users.
RSS
is being overtaken by a newer, more complex protocol called Atom.
See also: Atom, Blog, RDF, XML
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- SDSL -- (Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line)
- A version of DSL where
the upload speeds and download speeds are the same.
See also: ADSL, DSL
- Search Engine
- A (usually web-based)
system for searching the information available on the Web.
Some search engines work by automatically searching the contents of other
systems and creating a database of the results. Other search engines contains
only material manually approved for inclusion in a database, and some combine
the two approaches.
See also: WWW
- Security Certificate
- A chunk of
information (often stored as a text file) that is used by the SSL
protocol to establish a secure connection.
See also: SSL
- SEO -- (Search Engine Optimization)
- The practice of designing web
pages so that they rank as high as possible in search results from search
engines.
There is "good" SEO and "bad" SEO. Good SEO involves
making the web page clearly describe its subject, making sure it contains
truly useful information, including accurate information in Meta tags,
and arranging for other web sites to make links to the page. Bad SEO involves
attempting to deceive people into believing the page is more relevant than it
truly is by doing things like adding inaccurate Meta tags to the page.
See also: Meta Tag, Search
Engine
- Server
- A computer, or a software
package, that provides a specific kind of service to client software
running on other computers. The term can refer to a particular piece of
software, such as a WWW server, or to the machine on which the software
is running, e.g. "Our mail server is down today, that's why e-mail isn't
getting out."
A single server machine can (and often does) have several different server
software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to
clients on the network.
Sometimes server software is designed so that additional capabilities can
be added to the main program by adding small programs known as
servlets.
See also: Client, Network, Servlet
- Servlet
- A small computer program
designed to be add capabilities to a larger piece of server software.
Common examples are "Java servlets", which are small programs written in
the Java language and which are added to a web server. Typically
a web server that uses Java servlets will have many of them, each one designed
to handle a very specific situation, for example one servlet will handle
adding items to a "shopping cart", while a different servlet will handle
deleting items from the "shopping cart."
See also: Java, Server, Web
- SLIP -- (Serial Line Internet Protocol)
- A standard that was popular in
the early 1990's for using a regular telephone line (a serial line) and a
modem to connect a computer as a realInternet site. SLIP has
largely been replaced by PPP.
See also: PPP
- SMDS -- (Switched Multimegabit Data Service)
- A standard for very high-speed
data transfer.
- SMTP -- (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
- The main protocol used to send
electronic mail from server to server on the Internet.
SMTP is defined in RFC 821 and modified by many later RFC's.
See also: Email, RFC, Server
- SNMP -- (Simple Network Management Protocol)
- A set of standards for
communication with devices connected to a TCP/IP network. Examples of
these devices include routers, hubs, and switches.
SNMP is defined in RFC 1089
See also: Network, RFC, Router, TCP/IP
- SOAP -- (Simple Object Access Protocol)
- A protocol for
client-server communication that sends and receives information
"on top of" HTTP. The data sent and received is in a particular
XML format specifically designed for use with SOAP. SOAP is similar to
the XMLRPC protocol except that SOAP provides for more sophisticated
handling of complex data being sent between a client and a server. SOAP
actually grew from the work that created XMLRPC.
Microsoft's ".NET"
system is largely based on SOAP.
See also: Client, HTTP, Protocol, Server, XML, XMLRPC
- Spam (or Spamming)
- An inappropriate
attempt to use a mailing list, or USENET or other networked
communications facility as if it was a broadcast medium (which it is not) by
sending the same message to a large number of people who didn?t ask for it.
The term probably comes from a famous Monty Python skit which featured the
word spam repeated over and over. The term may also have come from someone?s
low opinion of the food product with the same name, which is generally
perceived as a generic content-free waste of resources. (Spam® is a registered
trademark of Hormel Corporation, for its processed meat product.)
See also: Maillist, USENET
- Spyware
- A somewhat vague term
generally referring to software that is secretly installed on a users computer
and that monitors use of the computer in some way without the users' knowledge
or consent.
Most spyware tries to get the user to view advertising
and/or particular web pages. Some spyware also sends information about
the user to another machine over the Internet.
Spyware is usually
installed without a users' knowledge as part of the installation of other
software, especially software such as music sharing software obtained via
download.
See also: Download, Web
page
- SQL -- (Structured Query Language)
- A specialized language for
sending queries to databases. Most industrial-strength and many smaller
database applications can be addressed using SQL. Each specific application
will have its own slightly different version of SQL implementing features
unique to that application, but all SQL-capable databases support a common
subset of SQL.
A example of an SQL statement is:
SELECT name,email FROM people_table WHERE contry='uk'
- SSL -- (Secure Socket Layer)
- A protocol designed by Netscape
Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the
Internet.
- Sysop -- (System Operator)
- Anyone responsible for the
physical operations of a computer system or network resource. For example, a
System Administrator decides how often backups and maintenance should be
performed and the System Operator performs those tasks.
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- T-1
- A leased-line connection
capable of carrying data at 1,544,000 bits-per-second. At maximum
theoretical capacity, a T-1 line could move a megabyte in less than 10
seconds. That is still not fast enough for full-screen, full-motion video, for
which you need at least 10,000,000 bits-per-second. T-1 lines are commonly
used to connect large LANs to theInternet.
See also: Bit, Internet
(Upper case I), LAN, Leased
Line, Megabyte
- T-3
- A leased-line connection
capable of carrying data at 44,736,000 bits-per-second. This is more than
enough to do full-screen, full-motionvideo.
See also: Internet
(Upper case I), LAN, Leased
Line
- TCP/IP -- (Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol)
- This is the suite of protocols
that defines the Internet. Originally designed for the UNIX
operating system, TCP/IP software is now included with every major kind of
computer operating system. To be truly on the Internet, your computer
must have TCP/IP software.
See also: Internet
(Upper case I), IPv4, IPv6, Packet
Switching, Unix
- Telnet
- The command and program used
to login from one Internet siteto another. The telnet
command/program gets you to the login: prompt of another host.
See also: Host, Login
- Terabyte
- 1000 gigabytes.
See also: Gigabyte
- Terminal
- A device that allows you to
send commands to a computer somewhere else. At a minimum, this usually means a
keyboard and a display screen and some simple circuitry. Usually you will use
terminal software in a personal computer - the software pretends to be
(emulates) a physical terminal and allows you to type commands to a computer
somewhere else.
- Terminal Server
- A special purpose
computer that has places to plug in many modemson one side, and a
connection to a LAN or host machine onthe other side. Thus the
terminal server does the work of answering thecalls and passes the connections
on to the appropriate node. Mostterminal servers can provide PPP
or SLIP services if connectedto the Internet.
- TLD -- (Top Level Domain)
- The last (right-hand) part of a
complete Domain Name. For example in the domain name www.matisse.net
".net" is the Top Level Domain.
There are a large number of TLD's, for example .biz, .com, .edu, .gov,
.info, .int, .mil, .net, .org, and a collection of two-letter TLD's
corresponding to the standard two-letter country codes, for example, .us, .ca,
.jp, etc.
See also: Domain
Name
- Trojan Horse
- A computer program is
either hidden inside another program or that masquerades as something it is
not in order to trick potential users into running it. For example a program
that appears to be a game or image file but in reality performs some other
function. The term "Trojan Horse" comes from a possibly mythical ruse of war
used by the Greeks sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C.
A Trojan Horse computer program may spread itself by sending copies of
itself from the host computer to other computers, but unlike a virus it
will (usually) not infect other programs.
See also: Virus, Worm
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- UDP -- (User Datagram Protocol)
- One of the protocols for data
transfer that is part of the TCP/IP suite of protocols. UDP is a
"stateless" protocol in that UDP makes no provision for acknowledgement of
packets received.
See also: Packet
Switching, TCP/IP
- Unix
- A computer operating system (the
basic software running on a computer, underneath things like word processors
and spreadsheets). Unix is designed to be used by many people at the same time
(it is multi-user) and has TCP/IP built-in. It is the most common
operating system for servers on the Internet.
Apple computers' Macintosh operating system, as of version 10 ("Mac OS X"),
is based on Unix.
See also: Linux, Server, TCP/IP
- Upload
- Transferring data (usually a
file) from a the computer you are using to another computer. The opposite of
download.
See also: Download
- URI -- (Uniform Resource Identifier)
- An address for s resource
available on the Internet.
The first part of a URI is called the "scheme". the most well known scheme
is http, but there are many others. Each URI scheme has its own format
for how a URI should appear.
Here are examples of URIs using the
http, telnet, and news schemes: http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html
telnet://well.sf.ca.us
news:new.newusers.questions
See also: URL, URN
- URL -- (Uniform Resource Locator)
- The term URL is basically
synonymous with URI. URI has replaced URL in technical specifications.
See also: URI, URN
- URN -- (Uniform Resource Name)
- A URI that is supposed to
be available for along time. For an address to be a URN some institution is
supposed to make a commitment to keep the resource available at that address.
See also: URI
- USENET
- A world-wide system of
discussion groups, with comments passed among hundreds of thousands of
machines. Not all USENET machines are on the Internet. USENET is
completely decentralized, with over 10,000 discussion areas, called
newsgroups.
See also: Newsgroup
- UUENCODE -- (Unix to Unix Encoding)
- A method for converting
files from Binaryto ASCII (text) so that they can be sent across
the Internet via email.
See also: ASCII, Binary, Email
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- Veronica -- (Very Easy Rodent Oriented
Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives)
- Developed at the University
of Nevada, Veronica was a constantly updated database of the names of almost
every menu item on thousands of gopherservers. The Veronica database
could be searched from most major gophermenus.
Now made obsolete by web-bases search engines.
See also: Gopher, Search
Engine
- Virus
- A chunk of computer programming
code that makes copies of itself without any concious human intervention. Some
viruses do more than simply replicate themselves, they might display messages,
install other software or files, delete software of files, etc.
A virus requires the presence of some other program to replicate itself.
Typically viruses spread by attaching themselves to programs and in some cases
files, for example the file formats for Microsoft word processor and
spreadsheet programs allow the inclusion of programs called "macros" which can
in some cases be a breeding ground for viruses.
See also: Trojan
Horse, Worm
- VOIP -- (Voice Over IP)
- A specification and various
technologies used to allow making telephone calls over IP networks,
especially the Internet.
Just as modems allow computers
to connect to the Internet over regular telephone lines, VOIP technology
allows humans to talk over Internet connections.
Costs for VOIP calls
can be a lot lower than for traditional telephone calls. Because the IP
networks are packet-switched this allows for vastly different ways of
handling connections and more efficient use of network resources so that
See also: Internet
(Upper case I), IPv4, IPv6, Modem, Packet
Switching
- VPN -- (Virtual Private Network)
- Usually refers to a
network in which some of the parts are connected using the public
Internet, but the data sent across the Internet is encrypted, so the
entire network is "virtually" private.
See also: Internet
(Upper case I)
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- WAIS -- (Wide Area Information Servers)
- Developed in the early 1990s
WAIS was the first truly large-scale system to allow the indexing of huge
quantities of information on the Web, and to make those indices
searchable across networks such as the Internet. WAIS was also
pioneering in its use of ranked (scored) results where the software tries to
determine how relevant each result it.
- WAN -- (Wide Area Network)
- Any internet or
network that covers an area larger than a single building or campus.
See also: internet
(Lower case i), LAN
- Web
- Short for "World Wide Web."
See also: WWW
- Web page
- A document designed for
viewing in a web browser. Typically written in HTML. A
web site is made of one or more web pages.
See also: Browser, HTML, Web, Website
- Website
- The entire collection of
web pages and other information (such as images, sound, and video
files, etc.) that are made available through what appears to users as a single
web server. Typically all the of pages in a web site share the same basic
URL, for example the following URLs are all for pages within the same
web site:
http://www.baytherapy.com/
http://www.baytherapy.com/whatis/
http://www.baytherapy.com/teenagers/
The term has a somewhat informal nature since a large organization might
have separate "web sites" for each division, but someone might talk informally
about the organizations' "web site" when speaking of all of them.
See also: Web, Web
page
- Wi-Fi -- (Wireless Fidelity)
- A popular term for a form of
wireless data communication, basically Wi-Fi is "Wireless Ethernet".
See also: Ethernet
- Worm
- A worm is a virus that
does not infect other programs. It makes copies of itself, and infects
additional computers (typically by making use of network connections) but does
not attach itself to additional programs; however a worm might alter, install,
or destroy files and programs.
See also: Trojan
Horse, Virus
- WWW -- (World Wide Web)
- World Wide Web (or simply Web for
short) is a term frequently used (incorrectly) when referring to "The
Internet", WWW has two major meanings:
First, loosely used: the whole constellation of resources that can be
accessed using Gopher, FTP, HTTP,telnet, USENET, WAIS and some other
tools.
Second, the universe of hypertext servers (HTTP servers),
more commonly called "web servers", which are the servers that serve web
pages to web browsers.
See also: Browser, FTP, Gopher, HTTP, Internet
(Upper case I), Server, URL, Web, Web
page
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- XML -- (eXtensible Markup Language)
- A
widely used system for defining data formats. XML provides a very rich system
to define complex documents and data structures such as invoices, molecular
data, news feeds, glossaries, inventory descriptions, real estate properties,
etc.
As long as a programmer has the XML definition for a collection of data
(often called a "schema") then they can create a program to reliably process
any data formatted according to those rules.
- XMLRPC -- (XML Remote Procedure Call)
- A protocol for
client-server communication that sends and receives information
"on top of" HTTP. The data sent and received is in a particular
XML format specifically designed for use with XMLRPC.
See also: Client, HTTP, Protocol, Server, SOAP, XML
- XPFE -- (Cross Platform Front End)
- A suite of technologies used to
create applications that will work and look the same on different computer
operating systems. A widely used XPFE application is the Mozilla web browser
and its derivities, such as the Netscape web browser in version 7 and later.
The primary technologies used in creating XPFE applications are
Javascript, Cascading Style Sheets, and XUL.
See also: CSS, JavaScript,
XUL
- XUL -- (eXtensible User-interface Language)
- A markup language similar to
HTML and based on XML.
XUL used to define what the user interface will look like for a particular
piece of software. XUL is used to define what buttons, scrollbars, text boxes,
and other user-interface items will appear, but it is not used to define how
those item will look (e.g. what color they are).
The most widely used example of XUL use is probably in theMozilla web
browser, where the entire user interface is defined using the XUL language.
See also: HTML, XML