Glossary

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ActiveX

This set of technologies from Microsoft provides tools for linking desktop applications to the World Wide Web. Using a variety of programming tools--including Java, Visual Basic, and C++--developers can create interactive Web content. For instance, ActiveX technology can allow users to view Word and Excel documents directly in a browser.

ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line)

A method for moving data over regular phone lines. This type of circuit is much faster than a regular telephone connection, and the wires into the subscriber's premises are the same (copper) wires used for regular phone service. It has been discussed as an alternative to ISDN, allowing higher speeds.

Applet

A small Java program that can be embedded in an HTML page.

ARPANet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network)

The forerunner to the Internet. Developed in the late 60's and early 70's by the US Department of Defence as an experiment in wide-area-networking that would survive a nuclear war.

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)

This is the 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.

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Backbone

A high-speed line or series of connections that forms a major pathway within a network.

Bandwidth

How much material 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 15,000 bits in one second. Full-motion full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression.

Baud

In common usage the baud rate of a modem is how many bits it 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).

BBS (Bulletin Board System)

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 is an immense number of BBS¹s around the world; most are very small, running on a single PC with 1 or 2 phone lines.

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.

Bit (Binary DigIT)

A single digit number in base-2, in other words, either a 1 or a zero. The smallest unit of computerised data. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits-per-second. See Also: Bandwidth, Bps, Byte, Kilobyte, and Megabyte

BITNET

A network of educational sites separate from the Internet, but e-mail is freely exchanged between BITNET and the Internet.

Bps (Bits-Per-Second)

A measurement of how fast data is moved from one place to another. A 28.8 modem can move 28,800 bits per second.

Browser

A Client program (software) that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.

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.

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CSS

Cascading Style Sheets are a big breakthrough in Web design because they allow delvelopers to control the style and layout of multiple Web pages all at once. Before Cascading Style Sheets, changing an element that appeared on many pages required changing it on each individual page. Cascading Style Sheets work just like a template, allowing Web developers to define a style for an HTML element and then apply it to as many Web pages as they'd like. With CSS, when you want to make a change, you simply change the style, and that element is updated automatically wherever it appears within the site. Both Navigator 4.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 support Cascading Style Sheets. If you needed any more proof of the problem-solving nature of CSS, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has recommended Cascading Style Sheets (level 1) as an industry standard.

Certificate Authority

An issuer of Security Certificates used in SSL connections.

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.

Cgi-bin

The most common name of a directory on a web server in which CGI programs are stored. The 'bin' part of 'cgi-bin' is a shorthand version of 'binary', because once upon a time, most programs were referred to as 'binaries'.

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. Each Client 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.

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 their own network.

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 Browser¹s 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 customise what is sent back to the user, or keep a log of particular user's 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 but they can be used to gather more information about a user than would be possible without them.

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.

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DHTML

Dynamic HTML combines HTML, style sheets, and scripts to make Web pages more interactive. It sounds great. But while both Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and Netscape Communicator 4.0 support dynamic HTML features, they do so in different--and incompatible--ways. The companies say they will work to make their browsers compatible with whatever specification the W3C finally decides upon. However, the browsers may be in their fifth generation before users see a concrete standard.

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. Domain Names. 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.

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E-mail (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 (Mailing List).

Ethernet

A very common method of networking computers in a LAN. Ethernet will handle about 10,000,000 bits-per-second and can be used with almost any kind of computer.

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FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

FAQs are documents that list and answer the most common questions on a particular subject. There are hundreds of FAQs on subjects as diverse as Pet Grooming and Cryptography. People who have tired of answering the same question over and over usually write FAQs.

FDDI (Fibre Distributed Data Interface)

A standard for transmitting data on optical fibre cables at a rate of around 100,000,000 bits-per-second (10 times as fast as Ethernet, about twice as fast as 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 LAN into two or more parts for security purposes.

Some organisations have chosen to separate their networks from the rest of the world while still allowing certain users the ability to access resources outside of that organisation's network. This access is provided through a "gateway" or "firewall" host system and is generally uni-directional.

There are other kinds of firewall, which are not specifically configured. If your local area network is behind a router-based firewall or behind a gateway requiring passive transfers, use the Passive mode of FTP.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

A very common method of moving files between two Internet sites. 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 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.

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Gateway

The technical meaning is a hardware or software set-up that translates between two dissimilar protocols, for example Prodigy 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 colour. 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.

Gigabyte

1000 or 1024 Megabytes, depending on whom is measuring.

Gopher

A widely successful method of making menus of material available over the Internet. Gopher is a Client and Server style program, which requires 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

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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. 'Hits' are often used as a very rough measure of load on a server, e.g. 'Our server has been getting 300,000 hits per month.' Because each 'hit' can represent anything from a request for a tiny document (or even a request for a missing document) all the way to a request that requires some significant extra processing (such as a complex search request), the actual load on a machine from 1 hit is almost impossible to define.

Home Page (or Homepage)

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, organisation, person or simply the main page out of a collection of web pages,

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 WWW and USENET.

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, additionally, in HTML you can specify that a block of text, or a word, is linked to another file on the Internet.

HTML 3.0

This extension of Hypertext Markup Language expands the original HTML specification, which was pretty basic and allowed documents to contain only one column of text, a little formatting, and a few graphics. Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium and Web software developers, HTML 3.0 offers enhanced graphics capabilities and enables Web-page designers to put in tables and frames and to flow text around figures. To read documents written in HTML 3.0 you must have a browser that supports it.

HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol)

The protocol for moving hypertext files 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).

Hypertext

Hypertext is a nonsequential way of presenting information. Hypertext links information in a complex web of associations, powered by hyperlinks. Essentially a way of browsing information, hypertext is a way to describe how you learn information from a well-designed CD-ROM encyclopedia or from the World Wide Web.

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Internet address

An Internet address or IP address is a unique identifier that defines a system's location on the Internet network. IP addresses are 32-bit addresses that are commonly specified in Internet dot notation, which consists of four numbers from 1 to 255 separated by dots (.), for example: 156.21.50.1

Each IP address is mapped to a unique hostname, as it is easier for people to remember names than it is to remember strings of numbers.

Internet (Upper case I)

The vast collection of inter-connected networks that all use the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from the ARPANET of the late 60's and early 70's.

internet (Lower case i)

Any time you connect 2 or more networks together, you have an internet - as in inter-national

Intranet

A private network inside a company or organisation that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use. As the Internet has become more popular many of the tools used on the Internet are being used in private networks; for example, many companies have web servers that are available only to employees. Note that an Intranet may not actually be an Internet, it may simply be a network.

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. Most machines also have one or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember.

ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network)

Basically a way to move more data over existing regular phone lines. ISDN can provide speeds of upto 128,000 bits-per-second over regular phone lines. In practice, most people will be limited to 56,000 or 64,000 bits-per-second.

ISP (Internet Service Provider)

A company that provides access to the Internet.

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Java

Sun Microsystems' Java is a programming language for adding animation and other action to Web sites. The small applications (called applets) that Java creates can play back on any graphical system that's Web-ready, but your Web browser has to be Java-capable for you to see it. According to Sun's description, Java is a "simple, object-oriented, distributed, interpreted, robust, secure, architecture-neutral, portable, high-performance, multithreaded, dynamic, buzzword-compliant, general-purpose programming language.".

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.

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Kilobyte

One thousand bytes. Actually, usually 1024 (2^10) bytes.

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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.

Leased-line

Refers to a phone line 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: T-1, T-3

Listserv®

The most common kind of maillist, "Listserv" is a registered trademark of L-Soft international, Inc. Listserv's originated on BITNET but they are now common on the Internet.

Login

• The account name used to gain access to a computer system. Not a secret (contrast with Password).
• The act of entering into a computer system.

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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.

Megabyte

One million bytes. Actually, technically, 1024 kilobytes.

MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)

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 email program is said to be MIME Compliant if it can both send and receive files using the MIME standard.

When non-text files are sent using the MIME standard they are converted (encoded) into text - although the resulting text is not really readable.

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 exact copies of material originated at another location, usually in order to provide more widespread access to the resource.

Another common use of the term 'mirror' refers to an arrangement where information is written to more than one hard disk simultaneously, so that if one disk fails, the computer keeps on working without losing anything.

Modem (MOdulator, DEModulator)

A device that you connect to your computer and to a phone line, that allows the computer to talk to other computers through the phone system. Basically, modems do for computers what a telephone does for humans.

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.

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Netiquette

The etiquette on the Internet.

Netscape

A WWW Browser and the name of a company.

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.

Newsgroup

The name for discussion groups.

NIC (Networked Information Centre)

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: NIC also refers to Network Interface Card, which plugs into a computer and adapts the network interface to the appropriate standard. ISA, PCI, and PCMCIA cards are all examples of NICs.

NNTP (Network News Transport Protocol)

The protocol used by client and 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.

Node

Any single computer connected to a network.

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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 to different routes by special machines along the way. This way many people can use the same lines at the same time.

Password

A code used to gain access to a locked system. Good passwords contain letters and non-letters and are not simple combinations such as virtue7. A good password might be: Sad£2-6

Plug-in

A (usually small) piece of software that adds features to a larger piece of software. Common examples are plug-ins for the Adobe Photoshop®.

The idea behind plug-IN's is that a small piece of software is loaded into memory by the larger program, adding a new feature, and that users need only install the few plug-ins that they need, out of a much larger pool of possibilities.

POP (Point of Presence, also 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.
• Post Office Protocol refers to the way e-mail software such as Eudora gets mail from a mail server. When you obtain a SLIP, PPP, or shell account 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.

Port

• 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.
• 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: Domain Name, Server, and 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 catalogue 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.

E.g. A single message posted to a newsgroup or message board.

PPP (Point to Point Protocol)

Most well known as a protocol that allows a computer to use a regular telephone line and a modem to make TCP/IP connections and thus be really and truly on the Internet.

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Router

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 route to send them on.

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Security Certificate

A chunk of information (often 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 'fingerprint' 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.

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 isn¹t getting out. A single server machine could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to clients on the network.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)

The main protocol used to send electronic mail on the Internet.

SMTP consists of a set of rules for how a program sending mail and a program receiving mail should interact.

Almost all Internet email is sent and received by clients and servers using SMTP, thus if one wanted to set up an email server on the Internet one would look for email server software that supports SMTP.

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.

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 by sending the same message to a large number of people who didn't request it.

SQL (Structured Query Language)

A specialised programming 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 version of SQL implementing features unique to that application, but all SQL-capable databases support a common subset of SQL.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)

A protocol designed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet.

SSL used mostly (but not exclusively) in communications between web browsers and web servers. URL's that begin with 'https' indicate that an SSL connection will be used.

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 side¹s software sends to the other. Each side then encrypts what it sends using information from both its own and the other side¹s 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.

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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 is the fastest speed commonly used to connect networks to the Internet. See Also: Bandwidth, Bit, Byte, Ethernet, and T-3

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-motion video. See Also: Bandwidth, Bit, Byte, Ethernet, and T-1

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 available for every major kind of computer operating system. To be truly on the Internet, your computer must have TCP/IP software.

Telnet

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.

Terabyte

1000 gigabytes.

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 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.

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UNIX

A computer operating system (the basic software running on a computer, underneath things likes 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.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

The standard way to give the address of any resource on the Internet that is part of the World Wide Web (WWW). A URL looks like this: http://www.matisse.net/seminars.html or telnet://well.sf.ca.us or news:new.newusers.questions etc. The most common way to use a URL is to enter into a WWW browser program, such as Netscape, or Lynx.

UUENCODE (Unix to Unix Encoding)

A method for converting files from Binary to ASCII (text) so that they can be sent across the Internet via e-mail.

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WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers)

A commercial software package that allows the indexing of huge quantities of information, and then making those indices searchable across networks such as the Internet. A prominent feature of WAIS is that the search results are ranked (scored) according to how relevant the hits are, and that subsequent searches can find more stuff like that last batch and thus refine the search process.

WAN (Wide Area Network)

Any internet or network that covers an area larger than a single building or campus.

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