From time to time you may hear words or acronyms mentioned either on the internet, your computer or in e-mail. This on-line dictionary tries to answer these questions in a full glossary from A to Z.
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Advanced Digital Network, Usually referring to a 56Kbps leased-line.
See Also : Leased Line
A term often used in relation to the location of web sites or destination addresses for e-mail. If referring to internet addresses or URLs it will usually start with http://www. , Example: http://www.zephyr-ireland.com. If referring to e-mail, an address will usually contain the @ symbol. An address is often rendered in lower case. Example: info@zephyr-ireland.com.
See Also : HTTP, URL , Domain Name
See: DSL
Another name which refers to a person or group of people on a network. When an e-mail message is sent to an e-mail alias, it will automatically be forwarded to all the people on that alias mailing-list.
A method of transferring files using FTP which does not require usernames or passwords.
See Also: FTP
A small program written in a language called Java, that can be placed in a HTML page. Theseprograms can be as simple as games or can serve a commercial purpose, such as Currency Converters, or DataGraph programs. Applets are different than Java applications, in that they are not allowed to accesscertain resources on the local computer ( this is called the sandbox in Java programming), such as files and serial devices (modems, printers, etc.), and are prohibited from communicating with other computers across a network.
A software tool for locating files stored on anonymous FTP sites. You need to know the exact file name or a substring of it.
Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, which was the predecessor to the Internet. Developed in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s by the US Department of Defence as an experiment in wide-area-networking that would survive a nuclear attack, and if nodes of it would survive.
See Also: Internet
American Standard Code for Information Interchange is the de-facto standard for the representation 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. For Example, ASCII 65 is the letter A, ASCII 66 is B etc.
An AutoResponder is a method of replying to an incoming e-mail instantly and automatically. The automated reply is sent when an e-mail is received by a particular address at your domain. AutoResponder can be used to notify others when you are away or when an a reply might be expected.
A high-speed connection 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
How much binary data you can send through an internet connection usually measured in bits-per-second. A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move about 56,000 bits in one second. Full-motion full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression.
In common usage the baud rate of a modem is how many bits it can send or receive in one second. When a modem is referred to as being a 56.6K modem, 56.600 data signals are being transmitted per second over your analogue phoneline. 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).
Blind Carbon Copy, allows you to send a copy of an e-mail to somebody and you do not wish other the party to know that another copy was sent, you can place their e-mail address in the BCC area of your e-mail client. A list of all recipients of the e-mail appears on the message, except those listed in the BCC.
See Also: Carbon Copy.
Bulletin Board System, is a computerised 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. There are hundreds of thousands BBS’s around the world, most are very small.
BINary HEXadecimal, is sometimes written as BIN2HEX. This is a method of converting non-text files into ASCII.
Binary DigIT, is a single digit number in base-2, in other words, either a 1 or a zero. The smallest unit of computerized data. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits-per-second.
Also known as favourites, Bookmarks are a feature of internet browsers by where you can save frequently accessed links in a bookmark file, rather than have to look up the URL each time. If you wish to bookmark this page using Internet Explorer or Netscape, press Ctrl+D.
Bits-Per-Second, is a measurement of how fast binary data is moved from one place to another. A 56.6k Modem can move 56,600 bits per second.
A program which runs on your computer which is used to view at various kinds of Internet resources.
By The Way, a shorthand appended to a comment written in an SMS or in an e-mail.
See Also: IMHO
A set of 8 Binary Bits that represent a single character. Usually there are exactly 8 Bits in a Byte, sometimes more, depending on how the measurement is being made. For Example, The Binary Byte of 11111111 equals 256 decimal.
See Also: Bit
Carbon Copy, is used if you wish to send a copy of an e-mail to somebody you can place their e-mail address in the CC area of your e-mail client. A list of all recipients for To and CC appear on the message.
See Also: Blind Carbon Copy.
An issuer of Security Certificates used in SSL connections.
See Also: Security Certificate , SSL
Common Gateway Interface, can be used to describe scripts which run on a server, usually written in Perl or C. The term CGI refers to a set of rules and protocols which describe how Web Servers communicate with other server-side CGI programs. Any piece of software can be a CGI program if it handles input and output according to the CGI standard. Usually CGI programs are used for purposes such as putting the content of a web-based form into an e-mail message, or turning the data into a database query. CGI Programs usually reside in a directory called cgi-bin, but not always the case as this can be changed in the Web Servers configuration or by using .htaccess files.
This is the most common name of a directory on a web server in which CGI programs are stored. Most programs found in the cgi-bin directory are text files, written in Perl.
A software program that is used to contact and obtain data from a Server software program on another computer or network. A Web Browser is a specific kind of Client.
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 their own network.
A Cookie on the Internet refers to a piece of textual information sent by a Web Server, or JavaScript instructing the Web Browser software to save information to the users hard disk. This can later be retrieved by a similar script on the same web site, whenever the browser makes additional requests from the Server. Depending on the type of Cookie used, and the Browser’s settings, the Browser may accept or not accept the Cookie, and may save the Cookie for either a short time or a long expiry time.
Cookies may contain information such as login or registration information, on-line shopping cart information, user preferences, etc. Cookies cannot read information from your hard drive but they may be used to gather more information about a user than would be possible without them.
A script or server directive which counts the number of people that have visited or hit a specific webpage.
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: WWW
A Dial-Up account is provided by your ISP to allow a temporary communications connection between two machines. Both machines have modems and the client logs into the server. Dial-Up accounts can usually be acquired free, and you only pay for the phone call which establishes connection. In the Republic of Ireland, Eircom and IOL both provide free Internet access.
Digital certificates are used to uniquely identify the person or corporate entity, who owns the certificate by the information contained within it. That information can be fully trusted, as it is digitally signed by a trusted Certification Authority who check the authenticity of the information to be included in the Digital Certificate before they issue it. Digital Certificates allow us to establish the security needed to conduct safe data-communications and secure transactions with others.
See Also: Security Certificate , SSL
Domain Name Server, a program running on a server which automatically translates domain names from www.zephyr-ireland.com into their correct TCP/IP addresses, e.g. 65.108.17.93.
See Also: Domain Name
The unique name that identifies an Internet site, allowing IP Addresses such as 65.108.17.93 to be entered as human readable addresses like zephyr-ireland.com. 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 :
zephyr-ireland.com
mailbox.zephyr-ireland.com
wap.zephyr-ireland.com
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 text as the right-hand portion of their Domain Names (zephyr-ireland.com 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.
Digital Subscriber Line is a fast method of moving data over regular phone lines. A DSL circuit is much faster than a regular phone connection, even though the connections coming into the subscriber’s premises are the same as are used for regular phone services. A DSL circuit must be configured to connect two specific locations, which is similar to a leased line.
A commonly discussed configuration of DSL allows downloads at speeds of up to 1.544 megabits per second, and uploads at speeds of 128 kilobits per second. This arrangement is called ADSL, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. 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: bit , Bps , ISDN , Leased Line
A method of rendering data unreadable to everyone except the intended receiver. This is very important for the sensing of sending credit card numbers, private information or customer details over the Internet when conducting commercial transactions and is very important in network security.
See Also: SSL , Security Certificate
Electronic Mail, is a form of messaging, sent from one person to another via computer, using an address. E-mail can also be sent automatically to a large number of addresses using a Mailing List or E-mail alias.
A very common method of networking computers in a LAN. Ethernet will handle about 10 million bits-per-second and can be used with almost any kind of computer.
Frequently Asked Questions, are documents which list and answer the most common questions on a particular subject. There are hundreds of FAQs and are very useful if questions a frequently received on the same question and e-mailing each person with the answers would be too time consuming - in this case you could point them towards your FAQ.
Fiber Distributed Data Interface is a standard for transmitting data on optical fiber cables at a rate of around 100 megabits-per-second. This works out at about 10 times as fast as Ethernet, about twice as fast as T-3.
An Internet software tool for locating people on other Internet sites. The finger command on Unix will return user information such as login name, full name, last time the user received mail etc. Finger is also sometimes used to give access to non-personal information, but many sites do not allow incoming Finger requests.
A combination of hardware and software that separates a LAN into two or more parts for security purposes.
File Transfer Protocol is the most common method of moving files between two Internet connected machines. FTP is a special way to login to another Internet site for the purposes of retrieving and/or sending files. There are many Internet sites that have established 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.
A Gateway is a configuration of hardware or software set-up to translates between two dissimilar protocols. Another, less accurate description of a Gateway is to describe any mechanism for providing access to another system.
Graphic Interchange Format is a common format for storing image files, especially suitable for images containing large areas of the same colour. GIF format files of simple images can be smaller in filesize than the same file would be if stored in JPEG format, but GIF format does not store photographic images as well as JPEG. The maximum amount of colours is 256, and areas may be made transparent. GIF files can also be animated.
See Also: JPEG
A term to describe 1024 Megabytes.
A Hit means a single request from a web browser for a single item from a web server. For Example for this particular webpage there are 16 images, 4 HTML Files and 1 CGI request, this would result in 21 hits for each visitor to this webpage.
Hits are often used as a very rough measure of visits to a web site. Quotes such as 'Our web site server has been getting 100,000 hits per month' give the impression that the web site is very popular ; but if each page includes 100 1X1 GIF images each visit to the web site will result in more than 100 hits. Hits are generated even for requests for a non-existent document
Originally, the term Homepage was used to describe the page that your browser is set to use when it started up. Today the more common meaning refers to the main web page for a company, business, organization, or person.
A Host is 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 WWW, E-mail, Newsgroups and USENET.
In the case of Web Hosting, all the pages of a web site are placed on dedicated computers called Servers. These machines run processes called webservers, such as Apache, which then deliver webpages when requested.
HyperText Markup Language, is the formatting language used to create webpages. HTML uses what are known as Tags to surround a block of text with codes that describe how it should appear. The main advantage over pure formatting, you can also specify that a block of text, an image, or a word, is linked to another file on the Internet. In this way web sites with linked pages are built. HTML files are meant to be viewed using a World Wide Web Client Program, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape or Opera. You can view the code using any normal text editor and you will see a series of tags such as <a href ... to describe links, <b> to bold text, <BR> to make a line break, <HR> for a horizontal rule on a page, <p> for a start of a paragraph and most tags are compound links and therefore have to be terminated by a /, e.g. </B> signifies the end of a bolded piece of text.
HyperText Transfer Protocol, is the protocol for moving HyperText files across the Internet. Requires a HTTP client program on one end (Browser), and an HTTP server program on the other end (E.g. Apache Webserver ).
The Internet came about from the ARPANet project and is a vast collection of interconnected networks that all use the TCP/IP protocols. The Internet is made up of hundreds of thousands of independent networks, resulting in one global network.
An Intranet is 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 or company use. Intranets are built behind Firewalls for security and to ensure that nobody else has access to the information except those in the organisation.
Internet Protocol Number, sometimes called a dotted quad is a unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g. 65.108.17.93, to uniquely identify every machine that is on the Internet.
See Also: Domain Name , Internet , TCP/IP
Integrated Services Digital Network is a way to move data over existing regular phone lines but at a fast rate. In theory, ISDN can provide speeds of roughly 128,000 bits-per-second over a regular phone line, though in practice, most people will be limited to 56,000 or 64,000 bits-per-second.
Internet Service Provider, is a company that provides access to the Internet from a computer by using a modem or other similar device and dialing into the ISPs POP telephone number for a specific area. Examples of ISPs in Ireland are Eircom.Net, IOL, and ESAT Clear.
Java is a network-oriented programming and development language rather like C. Developed by Sun Microsystems Java is specifically designed for writing 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 be enhanced to include functions such as animations, calculators, and other facilities.
See Also: Applet
JavaScript is a client-side programming language which was developed by Netscape. JavaScript is used in web pages, to add features that make the web page more interactive. JacaScript is interpreted differently by Internet Explorer and Netscape which may result in different behaviour from JavaScript code.
The Java Development Kit is a software development package from Sun Microsystems which implements a basic set of tools which are required in order to develop, test and debug Java applications and Applets. This software is freely downloadable from the internet.
The Joint Photographic Experts Group produced the JPEG file format. This format is most commonly used as a format for image and photography files. JPEG format is preferred to the GIF format for photographic images as opposed to line art or simple logo art and has a maximum of 16.7 Million Colours.
See Also: GIF
A term used to define 1024 bytes.
A Local Area Network is a computer network limited to the immediate area of the network, usually the same building or floor of a building.
See Also: Ethernet
A Leased Line refers to a dedicated telecommunications connection to the Internet, required high speed data connections. A T-1 is a leased line theoretically capable of transferring a 1Mb file in 10 secs. A T-3 is a leased line theoretically capable of carrying information faster than a T-1.
A very common type of mailinglist, Listserv ® is a registered trademark of L-Soft International, Inc. Listservs originated on BITNET but they are now common on the Internet.
This term can be used to refer to the account name used to gain access to a protected computer system. The username is not particularly useful in gaining access to the system unless it is combined with a Password. The term can also be used to describe the action of entering into a computer system.
See Also: Password
This is an automated system allowing people to send e-mail to one address, whereupon their message is copied and sent to all of the other subscribers to the maillist.
Referring to 1024 Kb.
The word META indicates information about the Data. In web pages, multiple Meta tags are used in the header of the html code to provide information about the webpage. Commonly used Meta tag names are description, keywords, robots, author, date, and copyright.
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is the standard for attaching non-text files to standard Internet mail messages. Non-text files include graphics, spreadsheets, formatted word-processor documents, sound files, etc. An e-mail client is said to be MIME Compliant if it can both send and receive Non-ASCII files using the MIME standards. When non-text files are sent using the MIME standard they are converted (encoded) into text - although the resulting text is not really readable.
Besides e-mail clients, the MIME standard is also universally used by Web Servers to identify the files and their related MIME Types which they are sending to Web Clients, in this way new file formats can be accommodated simply by updating the Browsers’ list of pairs of MIME-Types and appropriate software for handling each type.
A Mirror web site is one which maintains an exact copy the parent web site. you may see this in Mirror FTP sites which allow you to download from sites in USA, Europe, Asia or South America.
The term Modem comes from MOdulator, DEModulator. It is a device available in most modern computers, which allows you to connect to to a phone line, and allows that computer to talk to other computers through the analog phone system. Basically, modems convert digital binary data into modulated analogue data, which is then reconverted to digital at the other end by another Modem.
MySQL is a freely available third-party database engine designed to provide fast access to stored data. Data can be stored, updated and deleted using languages such as PHP. The data can be retrieved from the database to allow the generation of dynamic webpages.
Often described as the rules, manners or etiquette to be used while on the Internet. Most companies have an acceptable usage policy for the internet and e-mail which equates to the same idea.
See Also: Internet
An Internet Browser originally based on the Mosaic program and developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Netscape is no longer the dominant browser it was, the market share taken over by Internet Explorer. Netscape provided new elements to the HTML language used by Web pages, but the Netscape extensions in HTML are not universally supported. Also, some Internet Explorer HTML Tags are not supported by Netscape.
The main author of Netscape, was Mark Andreessen who was originally part of the NCSA. Andreessen and Jim Clark together founded a company called Mosaic Communications and soon changed the name to Netscape Communications Corporation.
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.
The name for discussion groups on USENET.
See Also: USENET
Networked Information Center is generally, any office that handles information for a network. The most famous of these on the Internet is the InterNIC, which is where new domain names are registered.
Another definition of NIC refers to a Network Interface Card which plugs into a computer and adapts the network interface to the appropriate standard. ISA, PCMCIA, and PCI cards are all examples of Network Interface Cards.
Network News Transport Protocol is the protocol used by client and server software to carry USENET and Newsgroup postings back and forth over a TCP/IP network to a News or Mail client.
Any single computer connected to a network.
Packet Switching is a method of data transfer used to move data on the Internet. In packet switching, all the data transmitted by a machine is split into chunks, each chunk has the address of where it came from, the order it was in and the address to where it is going. This enables packets of data from many different addresses to be transmitted on the same communication lines, and be sorted, reassembled and directed to different routes by special machines along the way. This way many people can use the same lines at the same time.
A secret code used to gain access to a protected system, used in combination with a login ID. Good passwords contain letters, non-letters, numbers and Uppercase Letters such as NoTgu5D. Bad passwords are easy to guess and can result in your system being accessed. Examples of bad passwords are mypass, monday, password, root, openseasame etc.
See Also: Login
Perl stands for Practical Extraction and Reporting Language. It is an interpreted language that was written for parsing incoming data, scanning files and specialises in text manipulation. Perl is frequently used to develop CGI scripts to collect, parse and manipulate data collected from Web based forms.
A piece of software which adds features and extra functionality to a larger piece of software. A Common example is the internet where plug-ins are required to view webpages developed in Macromedia® Flash.
Portable Network Graphics format is similar to the GIF format, and was created as a result of a licensing dispute over the GIF format compression routine.
See Also: GIF
Point of Presence, or Post Office Protocol, two commonly used meanings for the term POP.
A Point of Presence usually means a city, node or location where a network can be connected to, often with dial up phone lines. If an ISP has a POP in Waterford, it means that they have a local phone number in Waterford for the Waterford customers to dial into and gain access to the internet.
A second meaning is, Post Office Protocol which refers to the way e-mail clients such as Outlook get mail from a mail server. A POP on your webserver or mail syatem allows your e-mail software to use and retrieve your mail. It is often referred to as POP3.
The term Port has 3 meanings.
Firstly Port can be used to define a connection on your computer which allows data transfer. E.g. the parallel port on a personal computer is where a printer or scanner would be connected. Other common port types are USB and serial.
On the Internet port often refers to a number that may be part of a URL, appearing after a colon right after the domain name. You can write our web address as http://www.zephyr-ireland.com:80 as our webserver is configured to sent HTTP requests on this port. 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 be configured to 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 like http://www.some-site.com:1701. This shows the HTTP Server running on the non-standard port of 1701.
Finally, the term Port also refers to the task of translating a piece of software from one type of computer system to another, e.g. to translate a Unix C program so that is will run correctly on a Macintosh.
See Also: Domain Name , Server , URL
Usually Portal is 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 list of sub-sites, a search engine, news, weather, etc. A Portal site may also offer free e-mail and other service to entice people to use that site as their main point of entry on the Internet. Good portals in Ireland and the UK are IOL, RTE, Ireland.com and Yahoo.
Point to Point Protocol, is a protocol which allows a computer to use a regular telephone line and a modem to make TCP/IP connections to the Internet.
A set specification of message formats and the rules computers or applications must follow to exchange data. The main advantage is that data can be exchanged between differing types of computers. Examples of protocols are TCP/IP, HTTP, and PPP.
See Also: SLIP , TCP/IP , PPP, FTP, HTTP , SMTP , NNTP, POP , SNMP , UDP
Request For Comments, an old term which is part of the process for creating a standard on the Internet. New standards are proposed and published on line, as a Request For Comments. The Internet Engineering Task Force is 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 is RFC 822.
A special-purpose computer or software package that handles the connection between 2 or more networks. Routers spend all their time looking at the destination addresses of the packets passing through them and deciding which best-route to send them on.
See Also: Network , Packet Switching
A script is a program that usually runs
on the Web server and processes information based on
input from the browser or the user. Common uses of
scripts are ; form-to-mail, which sends an e-mail based
on input from a visitor to a web site ; Logging scripts
which log accesses to a web site/webpage ; or Guestbook
scripts which add your name to a visitors Guestbook.
These scripts are usually written in languages such as
Perl CGI.
A Search Engine is a web site which has software called Robots, designed to retrieve META Data from other Web pages. When the data is collected it is stored in large databases. When browsers to the Search Engine enter keywords; these are compared against the contents of the database and the most relevant webpages appear at the top of the results listing. Excite, Google, Alta Vista and Lycos are examples of search engines.
A secure server also known as SSL.
A chunk of information stored as a text file that is used by the SSL protocol to establish a secure connection. Security Certificates contain information about who it belongs to, who it was issued by, a unique serial number or other unique identification, valid dates, and an encrypted ID that can be used to verify the contents of the certificate. In order for an SSL connection to be created both sides must have a valid Security Certificate.
See Also: Certificate Authority , SSL
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 like Apache, or to the machine on which the software is running like a Unix File Server. A single server machine could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to clients on the network.
Also known as SSI, Server Side Includes are parts of a webpage or the value of an environmental variable, that is automatically included in a HTML document as it is requested. This technique aids webpage development and can be used to quickly change a full web site by only changing one file. Information such as the current date, the currently logged on user, the last date the webpage was modified, webpage file size, can be included.
This is a term used to describe a facility which enables you to select goods as you browse through an on-line shopping catalogue. You can usually view descriptions, pictures or related product reviews. Payment for the selected goods can be made once you have finished using your shopping cart.
Serial Line Internet Protocol is a standard for using a regular telephone line and a modem to connect another computer. SLIP is gradually being replaced by PPP.
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is the main protocol used to send electronic mail on the Internet. SMTP consists of a set of rules or protocols for how a program sending mail and a program receiving mail should behave. Almost all Internet e-mail is sent and received by clients and servers using SMTP.
The Simple Network Management Protocol is a set of standards for communication with devices connected to a TCP/IP network, like routers, hubs, and switches. SNMP compatible devices can be monitored and/or controlled using SNMP messages. SNMP messages are known as PDU’s or Protocol Data Units which then interact with SNMP agents running on the device in question.
Spam is an inappropriate attempt to use an e-mail address, mailing list, newsgroup or other networked communications facility as if it was a broadcast medium by sending the same message to a large number of people who didn’t ask for it. You may get Spam on free e-mail systems, offering free Diplomas, free Credit evaluation, or other services. You may try replying to the unsubscribe address which must be sent along with unsolicited e-mail but this rarely works with dedicated spammers. The trick is to filter the e-mail address it came from so that future e-mails from this address are placed in your Trash folder in your mail client.
Structured Query Language, a specialized programming and instruction language for sending queries and requests to databases. Most database applications can be addressed using SQL. Each specific application will have its own version of SQL implementing features unique to that application, but all SQL-capable databases support a common subset of SQL commands.
Secure Sockets Layer, is a protocol developed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet so that sensitive data cannot be decoded. SSL is used mostly in communications between web browsers and web servers, but can also be used for other applications. URL’s that begin with “https” indicate that an SSL connection will be used. Also, in most browsers a broken key or lock in the status bar will become whole.
SSL provides 3 important things: Privacy, Authentication, and Message Integrity. In an SSL connection each side of the connection must have a Security Certificate, which each side’s software sends to the other. Each side then encrypts what it sends using information from both its own and the other side’s Certificate, ensuring that only the intended recipient can de-crypt it, and that the other side can be sure the data came from the place it claims to have come from, and that the message has not been tampered with.
See Also: Browser , Server , Security Certificate , URL
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 million bits-per-second. T-1 is the fastest speed commonly used to connect networks to the Internet.
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-motion video.
Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol, is a suite of protocols that defines the transmission of data over the Internet. Originally designed for the UNIX operating system, TCP/IP software is now available for every major kind of computer operating system. In order to connect to the Internet, your computer must have TCP/IP software installed.
The command and program used to login from one Internet site to another. The telnet command / program gets you to the login: prompt of another host.
1024 gigabytes.
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 and is often referred to as a Dumb terminal - as in it cannot so any processing itself. 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.
A special purpose computer that has places to plug in many modems on one side, and a connection to a LAN or host machine on the other side. Thus the terminal server does the work of answering the calls and passes the connections on to the appropriate node. Most terminal servers can provide PPP or SLIP services if connected to the Internet.
User Datagram Protocol, is 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 acknowledgment of packets received, i.e. it will not tell you if data was received at the destination.
See Also: TCP/IP
A multi-user multi-tasking computer operating system. UNIX is designed to be used by many people at the same time (it is multi-user) and and can do multiple tasks or operations at the same time (multi-tasking). It is one of the most common operating systems for servers on the Internet.
Uniform Resource Locator is the standard way to give the address of any resource on the Internet that is part of the World Wide Web (WWW). For example the URL of this webpage is visible in the top of your browser as http://www.zephyr-ireland.com/dictionary.html.
A world-wide system of discussion and newsgroups, with comments passed among hundreds of thousands of machines. Not all USENET machines are on the Internet, maybe half. USENET is completely decentralized, with over 10,000 discussion areas, called newsgroups.
See Also: Newsgroup
Unix to Unix Encoding is a method for converting files from Binary to ASCII (text) so that they can be sent across the Internet via e-mail.
A Virus is a deliberately engineered computer program that infects other computer programs and reproduces itself without the knowledge of the machine user. A virus may be destructive or just annoying, and should never be ignored. Viruses can be cleaned from a file system by using products called Virus Scanners. Examples of these are McAffe and Norton Anti-Virus, trial versions are available from the manufacturers web sites.
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. A typical example would be a company network where there are two offices in different cities. Using the Internet the two offices merge their networks into one network, but encrypt traffic that uses the Internet link.
Wide Area Network can be defined as any internet or network that covers a very large area.
Wireless Application Protocol, is a GSM based protocol for transmission of information to mobile handsets which are capable of decoding and displaying pages in WAP format.
See: WWW
World Wide Web refers to the Internet and the thousands of HTTP servers which make up the Internet. The term WWW is also often seen written as W3.
See Also: Browser, FTP , Gopher ,HTTP , Internet, Telnet , URL ,WAIS
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