Internet Terminology

• Glossary of Internet Terms

  Copyright 1994-95 Matisse Enzer
  Internet Literacy Consultants

  Permission is granted to use this glossary, with credit to Internet Literacy Consultants, for non-commercial educational purposes, provided that the content is not altered including the retention of the copyright notice and this statement. For permission to use it in other ways, or to suggest changes and additions, please contact us by telephone or e-mail.:
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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

  ADN

  (Advanced Digital Network) -- Usually refers to a 56K/bps leased-line.

  Archie

  A tool (software) for finding files stored on anonymous FTP sites. You need to know the exact file name or a sub-string of it.

  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 (uppercase I)

  Anonymous FTP

  SeeFTP

  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

  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.

  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.
  See also Bandwidth, Byte, Kilobyte, and Megabyte

  BITNET

  (Because It's Time 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 IBM VMS machines, and the network is probably the only international network that is shrinking.

  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.
  See also: 56K, Bit, T-1

  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

  Browser

  A client program (software) that is used to look 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 or 10 bits in a Byte, depending on how the measurement is being made.

  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

  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.

  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.
  See also: IP Number.

  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

  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 time as fast as Ethernet, about twice as fast as T-3 )
  See also: Bandwidth, Ethernet, T-1, T-3.

  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".

  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.

  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 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.
  See also: Client, Server, WWW, Hypertext

  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 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 Mosaic.
  See also: HTTP, Hypertext, Mosaic, 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.

  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 many such shorthands in common use online, especially in discussion forums.

  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.
  See also: Domain Name, Internet

  IRC

  (Internet Relay Chat) -- Basically a huge multi-user live chat facility. There are a number 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 only slowly becoming available in the USA but where it is available, it can provide speeds of 64,000 bits-per-second over a regular phone line at almost the same cost as a normal phone call.

  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 '70s. The Internet now (Nov. 1994) connects roughly 30,000 independent networks into a vast global internet.
  See also: internet (lower case i)

  internet (lower case i)

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

  Kilobyte

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

  LAN

  (Local Area Network) -- A computer network limited to the immediate area, usually the same building or floor of the 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: 56K, T-1, T-3

  Listserv

  The most common kind of maillist , Listservs originated on BITNET but they are now common on the Internet
  See also: BITNET, E-mail, Maillist

  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."
  See also: Password

  Megabyte

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

  MOO

  (Mud, Object Oriented) -- one of several kinds of multi-user role-playing environments, so far only text-based.
  See also: MUD, MUSE

  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.
  See also: MOO, MUSE

  MUSE

  One kind of MUD - usually with little or no violence.
  See also: MOO, MUD

  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 kids of e-mail access can participate in discussions together.

  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 best known and most widespread WWW browser or client software. 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.
  See also: Browser, Client, WWW

  NIC

  (Network 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.

  Network

  Any time you connected 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.
  See also: Internet, internet

  Newsgroups

  The name for discussion groups on Usenet .
  See also: Usenet

  Node

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

  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:

           Hot$l-6

  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