The Official First Resort Glossary of Internet Terms

|A |B |C |D |E |F |G |H |I |J |K |L |M |N |P |R |S |T |U |V |W |Z|

Access Privileges - The privilege to access and make changes to folders.

Address - The unique code assigned to the location of a file in storage, a device in a system or network, or any other data source on a network.

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

Anonymous FTP - A way to use the FTP program to log on to another computer to copy files when you don’t have an account on the other computer. When you log on, enter anonymous as the username and your address as the password. This gives you access to publicly available files.

Applets - Mini-programs that can be downloaded quickly and used by any computer equipped with a Java-capable browser.

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.

ARPANet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) -- The precursor to the 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.

ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) - A high-speed cell-switching networking technology that can be scaled from 128 Mbps to more than six Gbps.

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 - How much stuff you can send through a connection. Usually measured in bits-per-second. A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move about 15,000 bits in one second. Full-motion full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression. The higher the bandwidth, the more information - whether voice, video or data - that can travel to your computer.

Baud (older term being replaced by bps - bits per second): The number of signaling elements that can be transmitted per second on a circuit. 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 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.

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 (or Because It's There NETwork)) -- A network of educational sites separate from the Internet, but e-mail is freely exchanged between BITNET and the Internet. Listservs, the most popular form of e-mail discussion groups, originated on BITNET. BITNET machines are usually mainframes running the VMS operating system, and the network is probably the only international network that is shrinking.

Bookmark - The ability from a browser to mark a specific Web location for future use. That location can be accessed directly from the bookmark list without entering detailed address information.

BOT - "bot" is the colloquial term for programs that listen and respond on an IRC channel to conversation.

Bottleneck - A system capacity constraint that may reduce traffic during peak load conditions.

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.

Broadband - A high-capacity communications circuit/path. It usually implies a speed greater than 1.544Mbps.

Browser - A client program (software) that is used to looking at various kinds of Internet resources. It permits browsing, retrieval and viewing of content from the World Wide Web and intranets. It also gives you a graphical interactive interface for searching, finding, viewing and managing information over a network.

BTW (By The Way) -- A shorthand appended to a comment written in an online forum.

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.

Capacity - The highest possible (reliable) transmission speed that can be carried on a channel, circuit or piece of equipment. Capacity may be expressed as raw speed or net throughput.

Carrier - A telecommunications provider which owns network switch equipment.

CATV Cable Television - Community Antenna Television. A community television system, served by cable and connected to a common (set of) antenna(s). 1994 Federal legislation may allow CATV providers to compete for telephone service (on the Information Superhighway).

CERN - The European Laboratory for Particle Physics, site of the first World Wide Web conference and considered the birthplace of WWW technology. Work on WWW technology and setting standards has moved to the World Wide Web Organization (W3O, at w3.org). http://www.cern.ch/

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) -- The standard for running programs on a server from a Web page. Gateway programs, or scripts, are executable programs which can be run by various (possibly very different) information servers interchangably. Gateways conforming to this specification can be written in any language which produces an executable file. Some of the more popular languages to use include: C or C++, Perl, Python, TCL, shells, and many others.

Some of the most common CGI scripts found on the Web are programs which process the information a user might enter on a form or whenever an imagemap is "clicked" on.

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 refered to as "binaries". In real life, most programs found in cgi-bin directories are text files -- scripts that are executed by binaries located elsewhere on the same machine.

Channel - A telecommunications path (pipe) of a specific capacity (speed) between two locations in a network.

Chat - "Chat" is a term used to describe real-time conferencing. For example, IRC, "WebChat", Prodigy and AOL chat rooms are all examples of "chat".

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.

com - When these letters appear at the end of an address, they indicate that the host computer is run by a company rather than a university or government agency. It also means that the host computer is most likely located in the U.S.

Common Carrier - A carrier that holds itself out as serving the public (or a segment thereof) indifferently (i.e., without regard to the identity of the customer and without undue discrimination).

Communication Link -A system of hardware and software connecting two end users.

Compression / Decompression - A method of encoding/decoding signals that allows transmission (or storage) of more information than the media would otherwise be able to support.

Connection - A point-to-point dedicated or switched communication path.

Cookies - A mechanism for server-side connections to store and retrieve information on the client side.

Cyberpunk - Cyberpunk was originally a cultural sub-genre of science fiction taking place in a not-so-distant, dystopian, over-industrialized society. The term grew out of the work of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and has evolved into a cultural label encompassing many different kinds of human, machine, and punk attitudes. It includes clothing and lifestyle choices as well.

Cyberspace - Originally used in "Neuromancer," William Gibson's novel of direct brain-computer networking, refers to the collective realms of computer-aided communication.

Database - A multiuser collection of information. Often supports random access selectivity and multiple "views" or levels of abstraction of the underlying data.

Dedicated Line - A private line leased from a telecommunications carrier.

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

Digital - A device or method that uses discrete variations in voltage, frequency, amplitude, location, etc. to encode, process, or carry binary (zero or one) signals for sound, video, computer data or other information.

DNS - The Domain Name System, a system for translating computer names into numeric Internet addresses.

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. gateway.gbnetwork.com mail.gbnetwork.com www.gbnetwork.com and so on. 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. .com .edu .mil .gov .net .org

Download - To transfer programs or data from a computer to a connected device, usually from a server to a personal computer

Drag and Drop - A GUI (Graphic User Interface) concept that allows one screen object to be selected and passed as input to another screen object (icon).

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).

edu - When these letters appear at the end of an address, they indicate that the host computer is run by an educational institution. It also means that the host computer is most likely located in the U.S.

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.

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. 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).

File extensions - See the following listings: JPG, GIF, WAV, AVI

File Server - A computer that provides access to files for remote users (clients).

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.

Finger Protocol - which allows finding information about the users on your host network. Some networks do not allow fingering from an external system, and some do not allow fingering at all.

Fire Wall - A combination of hardware and software that separates a LAN into two or more parts for security purposes. A system or set of systems through which all traffic between an internal network and an external network (usually the Internet) must pass. A firewall allows only authorized traffic to continue to the other side, where "authorized" is defined by the

Flame - Originally, flame meant to carry forth in a passionate manner in the spirit of honorable debate. Flames most often involved the use of flowery language and flaming well was an art form. More recently flame has come to refer to any kind of derogatory comment no matter how witless or crude.

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.

Frame Relay - A wide area network technology that breaks data into variable-length frames and allocates bandwidth by demand.

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.

Gateway Protocol converter - An application-specific node that connects otherwise incompatible networks. Converts data codes and transmission protocols to enable interoperability.

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 Graphics Interchange Format - GIF is a standard format for image files on the WWW. The GIF file format is popular because it uses a compression method to make files smaller.

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 and we can expect they will remain for a while.

GUI - Graphical User Interface.

Home - The startup page of a site, containing identity and index information.

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 files are meant to be viewed using a World Wide Web Client Program, such as Netscape or Mosaic.

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).

Hyperlink - Connections between one piece of information and another.

Hypermedia - A method of presenting information in discrete units, or nodes, that are connected by links. The information may be presented using a variety of media such as text, graphics, audio, video, animation, image or executable documentation.

Hypertext - Describes a type of interactive online navigation functionality. Links (URLs) embedded in words or phrases allows the user to select (e.g. mouse click) text and immediately display related information and multimedia material. 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.

Icon - The graphical symbol from the Windows or other graphical desktop that allows a quick access to an application software product.

IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) -- A shorthand appended to a comment written in an online forum, IMHO indicates that the writer is aware that they are expressing a debatable view, probably on a subject already under discussion. One of may such shorthands in common use online, especially in discussion forums.

Information Superhighway - A Buzz word. (see also - Media Hype) Refers to the Clinton/Gore administration plan to deregulate communication services allowing for the integration of all aspects of the Internet, CATV, telephone, business, entertainment, information providers, education, etc.

internet - (Lower case i) Any time you connect 2 or more networks together, you have an internet - as in inter-national or inter-state.

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. The Internet now (July 1995) connects roughly 60,000 independent networks into a vast global internet.

INTERNIC - The Internet-based index maintaining all unique Domain Name listings.

Intranet - A private network inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use. 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 (Internet Protocol) - The Internet protocol that defines the unit of information passed between systems that provides a basis packet delivery service.

IP Address - The Internet protocol address which is a 32-bit address assigned to a host. The IP Address (www.firstres.com is First Resort server’s IP address) IP address has a host component and a network component.

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

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) -- Basically a huge multi-user live chat facility. There are a number of major IRC servers around the world which are linked to each other. Anyone can create a channel and anything that anyone types in a given channel is seen by all others in the channel. Private channels can (and are) created for multi-person conference calls.

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. A set of standards for high-speed transmission of simultaneous voice, data and video information over fewer channels than would otherwise be needed, through the use of out-of-band signaling.

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

Java - Java is a new programming language invented by Sun Microsystems that 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 include functions such as animations, calculators, and other fancy tricks. We can expect to see a huge variety of features added to the Web using Java, since you can write a Java program to do almost anything a regular computer program can do, and then include that Java program in a Web page. A programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. Applets written in Java include their own software players, so you can download and run them on any computer.

Java applet - A small program, similar to object-oriented C programs, designed to accomplish a single or limited function. Applets can be imbedded in HTML pages to operate when selected by a browser software that supports such programs.

JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group - One of two types of graphic formats used on the World Wide Web, the other being a GIF. The benefit of using JPG images is the higher color and resolution you can have which is 16 million colors as opposed to the 256 color limitations of GIF files. JPEG is an algorithm for compressing still images. Motion-JPEG, a variation of JPEG, is used to compress moving images.

Kilobyte - A thousand bytes. Actually, usually 1024 (2^10) bytes.

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.

LAN (Local Area Network) -- A computer network limited to the immediate area, usually the same building or floor of a building. A network in which all hosts are in close physical proximity (roughly, within the same building or set of adjacent buildings).

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.

Link - See Hyperlink.

List-Serv - "ListServ" is a free software program for automating the maintenance and delivery of e-mail mailing lists. There are mailing lists for many different topics - some lists are "open" (which means anyone on the list can send a message to the whole list, as in a conversation), and some are "closed" (only certain people can post information to them). The most common kind of maillist, Listservs originated on BITNET but they are now common on the Internet.

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

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.

Media - Information storage and distribution format (e.g. video tape, floppy disk, optical disk storage).

Megabyte - A million bytes. A thousand 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. 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 Browsers' list of pairs of MIME-Types and appropriate software for handling each type.

Mirror - An FTP server that provides copies of the same files as another server. Some FTP servers are so popular that other servers have been set up to mirror them and spread the FTP load to more than one site.

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. End user computer interface that enables digital data to be transmitted over analog transmission facilities like phone lines.

MOO (Mud, Object Oriented) -- One of several kinds of multi-user role-playing environments, so far only text-based.

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.

MPEG Moving Pictures Expert Group- . MPEG is a standard way to compress full-motion video.

MUD (Multi-User Dungeon or Dimension) -- A (usually text-based) multi-user simulation environment. Some are purely for fun and flirting, others are used for serious software development, or education purposes and all 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.

Multimedia - Computer systems that integrate audio, video and data.

MUSE (Multi-User Simulated Environment) -- One kind of MUD - usually with little or no violence.

Name Resolution - The process of mapping a name into its corresponding address.

NCSA - The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is an educational institute. The Mosaic web browser was created here. http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/

Netiquette - The etiquette on the Internet.

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

Netscape - A WWW Browser and the name of a company. The Netscape (tm) browser was originally based on the Mosaic program developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Netscape has grown in features rapidly and is widely recognized as the best and most popular web browser. Netscape corporation also produces web server software. Netscape provided major improvements in speed and interface over other browsers, and has also engendered debate by creating new elements for the HTML language used by Web pages -- but the Netscape extensions to HTML are not universally supported. The main author of Netscape, Mark Andreessen, was hired away from the NCSA by Jim Clark, and they founded a company called Mosaic Communications and soon changed the name to Netscape Communications Corporation.

Network - A system of interrelated elements that are interconnected in a dedicated or switched linkage to provide local or remote communication (of voice, video, data, etc.) and to facilitate the exchange of information between users with common interests. 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 on 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.

packet - A contiguous sequence of bits or bytes that make up all or part of a message communicated on a network.

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.

Page - A hypermedia document on the web.

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: Hot$1-6

PERL - An acronym for practical extraction reporting language. Created by Larry Wall (MIT), specifically for string parsing and comparing. Most commonly used as a CGI scripting language. It will most likely be replaced by a client-side language such as Sun Microsystem's Java which doesn't rely on the server to perform all computations.

PING - A network management tool that checks to see whether you can communicate with another computer on the Internet. It sends a short message to which the other computer automatically responds. If the other computer does not respond to the ping, you usually cannot establish communications.

PKZIP - PKZIP is a shareware compression utility for PCs. A program called PKUNZIP is used to decompress these files.

Pointer - An address (URL) embedded in data that specifies the location of data in another record or file. A hyperlink is an example of a pointer.

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.

Port - 3 meanings. First and most generally, a place where information goes into or out of a computer, or both. E.g. the serial port on a personal computer is where a modem would be connected. On the Internet port often refers to a number that is part of a URL, appearing after a colon (:) right after the domain name. Every service on an Internet server listens on a particular port number on that server. Most services have standard port numbers, e.g. Web servers normally listen on port 80. Services can also listen on non-standard ports, in which case the port number must be specified in a URL when accessing the server, so you might see a URL of the form: gopher://peg.cwis.uci.edu:7000/ 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.

Posting - A single message entered into a network communications system.

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. Dial-up Internet connection speaking in TCP/IP protocol, somewhat faster than SLIP. A protocol for making IP connections over a telephone line.

Protocol - An agreed upon sequence of bits, bytes or characters exchanged between programs for purposes of transmitting and receiving information.

Real Time - Rapid transmission and processing of event-oriented data and transactions as they occur, in contrast to being stored and re-transmitted or processed as batches.

RFC (Request For Comments) -- The name of the result and the process for creating a standard on the Internet. New standards are proposed and published on 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.

Robot - "Robot"s are usually mentioned in the context of the WWW as programs which traverse the web looking for information, perhaps for indexing into a search engine or to find errors in web sites or some such.

Router - A machine that forwards packets from one network to another. 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.

Search Engines - Software available on the Internet to search through existing sites to locate information. Examples of popular search engines are: Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, etc.

Server - A computer which provides some service for other computers connected to it via a network. The most common example is a frile server which has a local disk and services requests from remote clients to read and write files on that disk. It can also be a program which provides some service to other client programs. The connection between client and server is normally by means of message passing, often over a network, and uses some protocol to encode the client's requests and the server's responses. There are many servers associated with the Internet.

SGML - Standard Generalized Markup Language is a language for describing other tag-based structural document languages. For example, HTML is defined using SGML.

Signal An event - oriented change in state (e.g. a tone, frequency shift, binary value, alarm, message, etc.).

Site - Address location of a server on the Internet.

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. Dial-up Internet connection speaking in TCP/IP protocol.

SMDS (Switched Multimegabit Data Service) -- A new standard for very high-speed data transfer. Subset of proposed ATM specifications that lets users dynamically configure data networks to match traffic patterns.

SMTP (Simple Mail Trnasfer Protocol) - A protocol used to transfer e-mail between computers.

Socket - When your computer is on the Internet via a SLIP connection, a socket is a conversation your computer is having with a computer elsewhere on the net. You may have one socket for an FTP session, another socket for a Telnet session, and another socket taking care of getting your mail.

Spam (or Spamming) - An inappropriate attempt to use a mailing list, or USENET or other networked communications facility as if it was a broadcast medium (which it is not) by sending the same message to a large number of people who didn't ask for it. The term probably comes from a famous Monty Python skit which featured the word spam repeated over and over. The term may also have come from someone's low opinion of the food product with the same name,which is generally perceived as a generic content-free waste of resources. (Spam is a registered trademark of Hormel Corporation, for its processed meat product.) E.g. Mary spammed 50 USENET groups by posting the same message to each.

SSL (The Secure Socket Layer) - is a protocol that Netscape uses to provide people with secure transactions over the network.

STT (Secure Transaction Technology) - The STT specification is a software technology designed to provide a secure method for handling credit card transactions across electronic networks.

Sysop (System 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.

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.

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.

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. The driver software that connects PCS and networks to the Internet.

Telnet - Telnet is a network program that offers a way to log into and work from another computer. By logging into another system, users can access Internet services that they might not have on their own computers. 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.

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.

TTFN (Ta Ta For Now) -- A shorthand appended to a comment written in an online forum.

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.

UNZIP - To unzip a file means to decompress, or expand a file that has been made smaller using a compression utility.

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 ws: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. The form of the site address that reveals the name of the server where the site's files are stored, the file's directory path, and its file name. A URL is a sequence of characters used to denote the means for retrieving a specific document or a piece of content from a server on the Web.

Usenet (USEer NETwork) - Internet newsgroups. One of the earliest forms of "group electronic mail," currently at a level of about 10,000 different newsgroups. A world-wide system of discussion groups, with comments passed among hundreds of thousands of machines. Not all USENET machines are on the Internet, maybe half.

UUCP Unix-to-Unix Copy - A file copying facility between Unix systems, on which mail and USENET news services were built. While UUCP is still used (and is somewhat useful) the Internet provides a better way to do the same job.

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.

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.

VRML - Virtual Reality Modeling Language A "tag" language in which web pages are formatted that can support 3D graphics and interactive spatial navigation.

WAIS (Wide Area Information Server) - A powerful system for searching large amounts of information very quickly over the Internet.

WAN (Wide Area Network) - Any internet or network that covers an area larger than a single building or campus.

WAV - "wav" is the file extension used on some types of audio files.

Web Server - A networked host computer that contains HTML pages and possibly other forms of content served to clients via HTTP.

Web site - The same as a Home Page.

Web - Web, used as a noun, is shorthand for the World Wide Web.

Webmaster/Webmistress - System operator for a web site server.

Wideband - A medium-capacity communications circuit/path. It usually implies a speed from 64Kbps to 1.544Mbps.

WinSock (Windows Socket) - Windows Sockets is a standard way for Windows-based programs to work with TCP/IP. You can use WinSock if you use SLIP to connect to the Internet.

WINZIP - Winzip is a compression utility that lets Windows 95, 3.1, and NT users make their files smaller for faster tranfer over the Internet. This utility also decompresses files that were originally compressed using PKZIP or TAR formats. http://www.winzip.com/winzip/

WWW (World Wide Web) - Internet system for world-wide hypertext linking of multimedia documents, making the relationship of information that is common between documents easily accessible and completely independent of physical location.

ZIP - When one "compresses" (i.e., makes a smaller but equal copy) a file using "pkzip", the resulting file is called a "zip" file. It usually ends with the file extension ".zip".

Revised - 8/13/96