Glossary
Technical Terms
- 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.
Access provider
- See Service Provider
- ADN (Advanced Digital Network)
- Usually refers to a 56K bps leased-line.
- Applications
- 1. Software programmes - Word processors, spreadsheets, web
browsers etc.
2. Practical uses for hardware and software.
- Archie
- This is an application that can find files stored on anonymous FTP
sites.
Search using `key` words and archie will scurry off and return later with
a list of files that match your exact file name, sub-string, word or description
on all the ftp sites in the world
- Anonymous FTP
- See FTP
- ARPANet (Advanced Research Projects Administration
Network)
- Developed in the late 60's and early 70's by the US Department of
Defense as a military experiment Wide Area Networks
in that would survive a nuclear war. The Internet
is a descendant of the ARAPANet
- ASCII (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange)
- 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. Some character sets
use slightly different versions of this, more suited to their alphabets.
- Attachment
- A file that you inlcude as part of an E-mail
- 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.
- Bandwidth
- The measure of how much information can travel down a connection,
a cable or a modem. Cables may be segmented
For modems, 2400 bits per second is slow, 14,400 is OK,
28,800 what to aim for, anything else is boasting. Full-motion full-screen
video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression.
- Baud Rate (BPS, bits per second)
- A unit to measure the speed a modem
transmits information, the more bits it can transfer,
the faster the modem. The terms BAUD and BPS are often (incorrectly) interchanged.
Technically, BAUD refers to the number of changes in the electrical signal
and at high rates, the BAUD RATE and BPS are not the same.
- 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 are many thousands of BBS's around the world and
many are very small, running on a single PC with 1 or 2 phone lines. Some
are very large - for example a system like Compuserve may be loosely described
as a bulletin board.
- Beta
- A copy of an application which has not
completed testing by the manufacturer, but may be on the market already.
Usually free.
- Binary
- Base 2 number counting system with just ones and zeros that computers
use. Binary files can contain graphics, sounds, video, programs or other
information.
- 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 computerized data. Bandwidth
is usually measured in bits per second
- BITNET (Because It's Time Network)
- A network of educational sites on IBM machines separate from the Internet,
but email
- is freely exchanged between BITNET and the Internet. The network is
shrinking. Listservs, the most popular
form of email discussion groups, originated on BITNET.
- Bookmark
- Marker that indicates a spot or web
page you want to return to.
- Bounce
- When an email is returned to you because of
delivery problems
- Browser (Web Browser)
- The software that is used to look
at various kinds of Internet resources, including web
pages.The two main browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer or more
commonly Netscape Navigator. They enable you to move around the Internet
just by clicking the arrow on the screen on highlighted bits of text (see
Hypertext Links). It can also
be used to do a lot of other things too like FTP and
Gopher.
- BTW (By the way)
- An abbreviation used in online discussions
and email messages
- Byte
- A set of 8 bits that represent a single character.
- CGI (Common Gateway Interface)
- This is a programming language for servers.
Instead of retrieving a web page for
you, the server runs a program (written in CGI) which may write a new page
on the fly, send you an email or register you on a
database.
- Communications Software
- A program that handles the business of computer to computer communications.
It allows you to set up your modem, dial
out to another computer, write messages and send and receive information.
Many times it is packaged within other software (Windows, Works, Word).
Also called modem software, comm software or term software.What you need
on your computer to use a modem. The good news, much is free or shareware.
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.
- Compatibility
- If two pieces of computer hardware or software are able to communicate
with each other, they are said to be compatible. The Internet
is designed so that all information passed on it can be accessed by any
computer.
- Compression
- Reducing the size of a file so that it becomes cheaper to store and
transmit. Compression techniques are used in files on the Internet to speed
up download times
- Compuserve
- Commercial online service
that provides many Internet services and online support for computer products.
See Service Provider
- Conferencing
- A live, online discussion. See IRC
- Cyberspace
- Term originated by author William Gibson in his novel "Neuromancer",
the word Cyberspace is currently (over-) used to describe the whole range
of information resources available through computer networks.
- Dial-up access
- An online service which
can be accessed by dialling a number on the telephony network
- Digital Cash (Ecash, Electronic Cash)
- Money that only exists as information. A way to pay for goods over
the Internet.
- Domain Name
- The unique name that identifies an Internet site.
Domain Names always have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. 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. Domain Name
can exist as aliases These web pages
are accessed as www.communities.org.uk, even though they resides on a server
which also has the name www.btwebworld.com. This is done so that a group
or business can have an Internet email address without having to establish
a real Internet site.
- DNS (Domain Name Server)
- A program which converts a domain name into a unique numerical address
or IP Number
- Download
- Copying or retrieving a file (text, picture, photo or sound files
etc.) from another computer or an online
service to your computer over the Internet. Beware, that doesn't mean
it's now on your hard disc - you must then save it if you want to keep it.
- E-mail (Electronic Mail, email, Email)
- The most widely used part of the Internet, email is private messages,
usually text, sent from one person to another via computer links. An email
can also be sent automatically to a large number of addresses anywhere in
the world almost instantaneously and requires no postage - see MailingList
- E-mail address
- This is where your "mailbox" is. If you have a user id you
have an address. (e.g. dwilcox@pavilion.co.uk or info@communities.org.uk)
It works the way as a P.O. Box, except that to collect your mail, you just
need to connect to the computer in which your mailbox resides. (e.g. pavilion)
- 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.
- Eudora
- The most popular email software
program for reading and writing, receiving and sending email
messages.
- FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
- FAQs are documents that list and answer the most common questions
on a particular subject and are written by people who have tired of answering
the same question over and over. When using online
services, it is a sign of respect for other users that you try to answer
a question yourself first, by checking the FAQs, before asking for help.When
getting into something new, look for the FAQs for quick and easy information.
- 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)
- Flame
- An angry or abusive email or online message.
If an unwanted guest continually leaves irrelevant messages in a mailing
list, for example, they may be flamed by the other members, leaving
them with a mailbox full of rubbish.
- Firewall
- Computer system which prevents some information from passing through
it. Passes authorised requests from one side to the other, rejecting unauthorised
requests. It maybe used to give access to the Internet, while protecting
your computer from anyone else.
- 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.
- Freenet
- A free (or very cheap) public-access information and discussion service,
usually for a local geographical area.
- FTP (File Transfer Protocol).
- A 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 and is
a great way to get shareware and free
software for your computer.
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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