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0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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56K Line. A digital phone-line connection (leased line) capable of carrying 56,000 bits-per-second. At this speed, a Megabyte will take about 3 minutes to transfer. This is 4 times as fast as a 14,400bps modem. See Also: Bandwidth , T-1.

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ADN (Advanced Digital Network) -- Usually refers to a 56Kbps leased line.

Anonymous FTP See Also: FTP

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. See Also: Veronica

ARPANet
(Advanced Research Projects Administration 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 that would survive a nuclear war.

See Also: Internet

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) -- This is the de facto 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. 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 (bps). 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. See Also: 56K Line , Bps , Bit , T-1

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 - so a 2400 bit-per-second modem actually runs at 300 baud, but it moves 8 bits per baud (8 x 300 = 2400 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. There are 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 CompuServe gets crossed at some point, but it is not clearly drawn.

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 , MIMI

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. Bandwidth is usally measured in bits-per-second. See Also: Bandwidth , Bps , Byte , Kilobyte , Megabyte

BITNET (Because It's Time NETwork) -- A network of educational sites seperate from the Internet, but e-mail is freely exchanged between BITNET and the Internet. Listservs, the most popular form of e-mail discussion groups, originated on BITNET. BITNET machines are IBM VM machines, and the network is probably the only international network that is shrinking.

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. See Also: Bandwidth , Bit

Browser A client program (software) that is used to looking at various kinds of Internet resources. See Also: Client , URL , WWW

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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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. See Also: Server 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.

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Digerati The digital version of literati, it is a reference to a vague cloud of people seen to be knowlegeable, hip, or otherwisein-the-know in regards to the digital revolution.

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. Usually, all of the machines on a given Network will have the same thing as the right-hand portion of their Domain Names, e.g. falcon.cc.ukans.edu www.sped.ukans.edu chef.sped.ukans.edu and so on. Each Domain Name is associated with one and only one IP Number, although not every IP number has a Domain Name. A computer known as a Domain Name Server translates Domain Names into IP Numbers and vice versa, thus allowing users to generally ignore IP Numbers as long as a Domain Name exists. See Also: IP Number

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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). See Also: Listserv , Maillist

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. See Also: Bandwidth , LAN

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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 Groooming 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 Ethernet, about twice as fast as T-3). See Also: Bandwidth , Ethernet , T-1 , 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.

Firewall A combination of hardware and software that seperates a LAN into two or more parts for security purposes. See Also: Network , LAN

Flame Originally, flame meant to carry forth in a passionate manner in the spirit of honorable descent. Flames most often involved the use of flowery language, clever insults, and witty repart�. 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 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 pubicly 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.

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 is being largely supplanted to 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 , Server , WWW , Hypertext

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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. See Also: Node , Network

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, a word, or a graphic is "linked " to another file on the Internet. HTML files are meant to be viewed using a World Wide Web Client Program, such as Mosaic. See Also: Client , Server , WWW

HTTP (HyperText Transport 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). See Also: Client , 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.

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Internet 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. The Internet now (January 1996) connects roughly 75,000 independent networks into a vast global network. See Also: Internet , Network , TCP/IP

Intranet The Intranet follows the same principles of an Internet. Yet, it is a private network of usually within a closed environment supporting one company. Unlike the Internet, it is not an emmense set of networks. It originated from the Internet capabilities, so it uses the same naming standards, and the same software and server packages. However, it is usually not connected to the Internet. It general purpose is to share private (or confidential) information across an organization or company. It is quickly gaining popularity due to it open standards, thus allowing information stored on unlike servers to be found. Like it's predecessor, users of the an Intranet can exchange electronic mail (email), send files (ftp), browse web (WWW)pages, and connect to any other computer (telnet). View our other page on Internet Definitions.

IP 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. If a computer has a direct connection to the Internet (for example through a network or a leased line) it will usually have a permanent, or static, IP number assigned. When a computer connects to the Intenet by dialing into a terminal server using a modem, it is usually given a temporary, or dynamic IP number by the system that only lasts for the duration of the connection. Computers with static IP numbers may also have one or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember. See Also: Domain Name , Internet An IP Address is the physical site address. So, like you home or office address, it has specific elements and is usually expressed in a standard order.Here's an example: john.doe@ccm.davis.uc.edu

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | type of organization (university - education, required)

| | | | | institution (University of California, not required)

| | | | site (Davis, not required)

| | | name of server (CCMail server - computer nickname, required)

| | seperator (required)

| further specifier of user"s name (not required)

user's name (required)

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) -- Basically a huge multi-user live chat function. 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".

ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) -- Basically a way to move more data over existing regular phone lines. ISDN is rapidly becoming 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 56,000 or 64,000 bits-per-second.

ISP (Internet Service Provider) -- An institution that provides access to the Internet in some form, usually for money. See Also: Internet

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Kilobyte A thousand bytes. Actually, usually 1024 (2^10) bytes. See Also: Byte , Bit

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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: Ethernet

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: 56K Line , T-1 , T-3

Listserv The most common kind of maillist, Listservs originated on BITNET but they are now common on the Internet. For more information, check out the Listserv information page. See Also: BITNET , E-mail , Maillist

Login Noun or a verb. Noun: The account name used to gain access to a computer system, also known as username. Not a secret (contrast with Password). Verb: The act of entering into a computer system, e.g. "Login to the WELL and then go to the GBN conference." 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: Listserv

Megabyte A million bytes. A thousand kilobytes. See Also: Byte , Bit , Kilobyte

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.
Generally speaking the MIME standard is a way of specifying both the type of file being sent (e.g. a Quicktime(TM) video file), and the method that should be used to turn it back into its original form.
Besides email software, the MIME standard is also universally used by Web Servers to identify the files they are sending to Web Clients, in this way new file formats can be accommodated simply by updating the Browser's list of pairs of MIME-Types and appropriate software for handling each type. See Also: Browser , Client , Server , BinHex

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.

MOO (Mud, Object Oriented) -- Similar to MUDs, MOOs are digital environments that allow the users to interact with each other and objects within the computer world. Unlike the text-based MUDs, MOOs are graphical in nature and are not run via Telnet sessions. An example of a MOO can be found at http://www.thepalace.com See Also: MUD , MUSE

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 has been licensed by several companies and there are several other pieces of software as good or better than Mosaic, most notably, "Netscape".
See Also: Browser , Client , WWW

MUD (Multi-User Dungeon or Dimension) -- A multi-user simulation environment similar to the text based computer adventure games of the 1970's and 80's (e.g. "Zork"), in which a character's environment is described and the user can command the character to interact with the environment in some way. Some are purely for fun and flirting, others are used for serious software development, or education purposes and all that lies 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 with in their absence, thus allowing a "world" to be built gradually and collectively. Most MUDs are conducted through Telnet.
See Also: MOO , MUSE

MUSE (Multi-User Shared Environment) -- A kind of MUD - usually with little or no violence.
See Also: MOO , MUD

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Netiquette The etiquette on the Internet.
See Also: Internet

Netizen Derived from the term citizen, referring to a citizen of the Internet, or someone who uses networked resources. The term cannotes civic responsibility and participation.
See Also: Internet

Network Any time you connect 2 or more computers together so that they can share resources, you have a computer network.
See Also: Internet , LAN , WAN

Newsgroup The name for discussion groups on Usenet.
See Also: Usenet

NIC (Networked Information Center) -- 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.

Node Any single computer connected to a network.
See Also: Network , Internet , internet

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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. The three most common passwords are "sex", "secret", and "God". Good passwords contain letters and non-letters and do not contain words. Of course, you should avoid using commonly known personal information such as the name of a pet or your birthday. A good password might be: hod1m6 See Also: Login

POP 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 dialup 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 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.
See Also: SLIP , PPP

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 person 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/ which 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: Domain Name , Server , URL

Posting A single message entered into a network communications system. EX: A message "posted" to a newsgroup or message board. See Also: Newsgroup

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 connection and thus be really and truly on the Internet.
See Also: IP Number , Internet , SLIP , TCP/IP

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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.
See Also: Network , Packet Switching

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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 mahchne could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to clients on the network.
See Also: Client , Network

SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) -- A standard for using a regular telephone line (a "serial line") and a modem to connect a computer as a real Internet site. SLIP is gradually being replaced by PPP.
See Also: Internet , PPP

Spam An inappropriate attempt to use a mailing list, or USENET or other networked communications facility as if it were 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 comes from a Monty Python skit which featured the word "spam" repeated over and over. EX: Mary spammed 50 USENET groups by posting the same message to each. See Also: Maillist , Usenet

Sysop (Systems Operator) -- Anyone responsible for the physical operations of a computer system or network resource. 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 is the fastest speed commonly used to connect networks to the Internet.
See Also: 56K , Bandwidth , Bit , Byte , Ethernet , T-3

T-3 A leased line connection capable of carrying data at 45,000,000 bits-per-second. This is more than enough to do full-screen, full-motion video.
See Also: 56K , Bandwidth , Bit , Byte , Ethernet , 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.
See Also: IP Number , Internet , UNIX

Telnet The command and program used to login from one Internet site to another. The telnet commmand/program gets you to the "login:" prompt of another host.

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.
See Also: LAN , Modem , Host , Node , PPP , SLIP

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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.

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.ccoptimizers.com/request.htm
or telnet://well.sf.ca.us
or news:new.newusers.questions

The most common way to use a URL is to enter it into a WWW browser program, such as Netscape, or Lynx. See Also: Browser , WWW

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

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Veronica (Very Easy Rodent Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) -- Developed at the University of Nevada, Veronica is a constantly updated database of the names of almost every menu item on thousands of gopher servers. The Veronica database can be searched from most major gopher menus. The name is a play on the less capable Archie program.