[INLINE] Instructional Technology Internet Glossary A Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) A policy statement from a network or organization giving the acceptable uses of the network for local use and accessing the Internet. WISD Acceptable Use Policy Anonymous FTP Also known as anon FTP; a service provided to make files available to the general Internet community in which users start an ftp session with a remote host, give the login or user name "anonymous", and give their e-mail address as a password. Application Applications are also called "apps" or simply "programs". Some common internet applications include FTP, e-mail, and Telnet. Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer are also common Web applications. Archie A tool (software) for finding files stored on anonymous FTP sites. You need to know the exact file name. A method of searching for files on anonymous FTP servers 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. The ARPAnet consisted of individual packet switching computers interconnected by leased lines. The ARPAnet no longer exists. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) A code for representing characters in a numeric form. 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. B Backbone A high-speed connection within a network that connects shorter, usually slower circuits. Also used in reference to a system that acts as a 'hub' for activity (although those are becoming much less prevalent now than they were ten years ago). Bandwidth The capacity of a medium to transmit a signal. Usually measured in bits-per-second. A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move about 15,000 bits in one second. Full-motion full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression. Baud In common usage the 'baud rate' of a modem is how many bits it can send or receive per second, as in "28.8 baud modem". BBS (Bulletin Board System or Service) A computerized meeting and announcement system that allows people to carry on discussions, upload and download files, and make announcements without all 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 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. Beta Test Software manufacturers like to send out their applications to "beta testers" before they release the product to the general public. Beta testers are end users eager to play with the new software. In return for their sneak previews, the testers make suggestions, ferret out bugs, and hopefully generate enthusiasm for the product's release. 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 digital data. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits-per-second (bps). Bookmark List A list of links to items on the Internet. Usually created by an individual using Gopher , Lynx, or Netscape Navigator . A good way to keep track of favorite or important sites, these are saved and can be used at any time. Some WWW browsers, e.g. Mosaic, use the term hotlist for this list of links. Bps (Bits-Per-Second). A measurement of how fast data is moved from one place to another. A 28.8 modem can move 28,800 bits per second. Browser A browser is the computer application that is used to view documents on the Web. The browser renders documents that are coded in HTML. Browsers cannot edit the documents they display. BTW By The Way. 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. C Client The user of a network service; a computer that relies upon another for some or all of its resources.; a software program that is used to contact and obtain data from a Server software program on another computer, often across a great distance. Cyberspace A term coined by William Gibson in his fantasy novel Neuromancer to describe the 'world' of computers, and the society that gathers around them; the word Cyberspace is currently used to describe the whole range of information resources available through computer networks. D 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 (as in "waco.isd". Dotted quad A set of four numbers connected with periods that make up an Internet address; for example, 147.31.254.130. Download Transfer a file from a remote computer to the computer used by the individual. E E-mail (Electronic Mail) Messages, usually text, sent from one person to another via computer. E-mail address The unique UUCP or domain-based address that refers to a user, as in "yourname@mail.waco.isd.tenet.edu". Ethernet A 10-million bit per second networking scheme originally developed by Xerox Corporation. Ethernet is widely used for LANs because it can network a wide variety of computers, is not proprietary, and components are widely available from many commercial sources. Ethernet will handle about 10,000,000 bits-per-second and can be used with almost any kind of computer. That's about 350 times faster than your 28.8 modem. F 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 Flame An e-mail message or article that's meant to insult someone or provoke controversy. This term is also applied to messages which contain strong criticism of or disagreement with a previous message or article. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) The Internet standard high-level protocol for transferring files from one computer to another. 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'. Freeware Software that is available for free on the Internet. Also referred to as public domain software. G GIF GIF is the acronym for Graphics Interchange Format, originally developed by CompuServe. GIF is widely used for icons, buttons, backgrounds, and bullet images in HTML documents. Gopher A text based distributed information system, developed at the University of Minnesota. It allows world-wide topic searching and file retrieval via menus of material available over the Internet. Although Gopher has spread rapidly across the globe in only a couple of years, it is being largely supplanted by the World Wide Web. GUI Graphical User Interface. Uses icons and images in addition to text to represent information, input and output. H History List A list of Internet sites, services, and resources which have been accessed through a WWW browser to arrive at the current item. Home Page The first screen or page of a site accessible through a WWW browser. A home page has hypertext links to other pages on the same server or other web servers anywhere in the world. Both companies and individuals can have their own home pages. Host Any computer on a network that is a repository for services available to other computers on the network. It is quite common to have one host machine provide several services, such as WWW and USENET. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) The coding language used create Hypertext documents for use on the World Wide Web. Documents displayed by Netscape Navigator and NCSA Mosaic are HTML documents. These documents are characterized by the .html or .html file extension. For example: homepage.html or homepage.html. 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. 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). Hyperlink A connection in a given document to further information within the same document or to another document. These links are usually represented by highlighted or underlined words or images. The user also has the option to underline these hyperlinks. Hypertext 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. I IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) A shorthand appended to a comment written in anonline forum, IMHO indicates that the writer is aware that he/she is expressing a debatable view, probably on a subject already under discussion. One of many such shorthands in common use online, especially in discussion forums. Internet address (Also Internet number) The dotted-quad address (eg. 147.31.254.130) used to specify a host computer. Each host computer on the Internet, has a unique address. All Internet hosts have a numeric address and an English-style name (called a "domain name"). Internet A global network of networks connecting millions of computers. It was devised by the US Department of Defense in the height of the Cold War to allow the government to continue the flow of information in the event of a nuclear strike. It was later inherited by the National Science Foundation. Internet Service Provider (ISP) Anyone who provides connectivity to the Internet as a service. ISPs range from small local providers to medium size regional providers to the better known national ISPs. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) A huge multi-user live chat facility. There are a number major IRC servers around the world which are linked to each other. J JPEG The Joint Photographic Experts Group, the international standards body that developed the compression/decompression algorithms for photographic image files, lends its name to the file format. At high compression ratios, JPEG images can lose details. K Kilobyte In general parlance a thousand bytes, but mathematically 1024 (2 raised to the power of 10) bytes. L LAN (Local Area Network) Any physical network technology that operates at high speed over short distances (up to a few thousand meters), as in a building or a campus). Listserv The most common kind of maillist, Listervs originated on BITNET but they are now common on the Internet Lycos A Web-search engine or "index". It is searchable by entering the words you want to look for, and brings up the URLs that have those words associated with them. The site's URL is: http://www.lycos.com/ Lynx A text-based World Wide Web browser (software) used for accessing information in a hypertext manner on the Internet. M MacTCP The necessary network software from Apple Computer that allows Macintoshes to interact with the other computers via TCP/IP Mailing list (also Maillist) A discussion group (possibly moderated) , focusing on a single topic, distributed via email from a central computer maintaining the list of people involved in the discussion. A 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. Medium The material used to support the transmission of data. This can be copper wire, coaxial cable, optical fiber, or microwave. Megabyte A million bytes. A thousand kilobytes. Also called a "meg". Modem (MOdulator, DEModulator) A device that you connect to your computer and to a phone line, that allows the computer to talk to other computers through the phone system. Basically, modems do for computers what a telephone does for humans. Mosaic The first WWW browser that was available for the Macintosh, Windows and UNIX all with the same interface. "Mosaic" really started the popularity of the Web. 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 Navigator. It gives the user a graphical interface (GUI) to Internet services and resources. MPEG Moving Pictures Experts Group, a method of storing movie files in digital format. Multiplex The division of a single transmission medium into multiple logical channels supporting many simultaneous sessions. For example, one network may have simultaneous FTP, telnet, rlogin, and SMTP connections, all going at the same time. N NCSA The National Center for Supercomputing Applications, located at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign,Illinois. Netiquette Proper behavior on The Net. Network A group of machines connected together so they can transmit information to one another. Connect two or more computers together so that they can share resources and you have a computer network. 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. P Password A code used to gain access to a locked system. Good passwords contain letters and non-letters and are not simple combinations. Port 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. 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 a TCP/IP connection and thus be really and truly on the Internet. PPP is gradually replacing SLIP for this purpose. Protocol A planned method of exchanging data over the Internet. A formal description of message formats and the rules two computers must follow to exchange those messages. Protocols can describe low-level details of machine-to-machine interfaces (e.g., the order in which bits and bytes are sent across a wire) or high-level exchanges between allocation programs (e.g., the way in which two programs transfer a file across the Internet). Q QuickTime A method of storing movie and audio files in a digital format developed by Apple Computer R 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'. RTFM (Read The Flaming Manual). This anacronym is often used when someone asks a simple or common question. S Server A computer that acts as an intermediate storage area for other computers connected to it via a network such as the Internet. 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.' T 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 45,000,000 bits-per-second. This is more than enough to do full-screen, full-motion video. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) A set of rules that establishes the method with which data is transmitted over the Internet between two computers. The suite of protocols that defines The Internet. Telnet The Internet standard protocol for remote terminal connection service. Telnet allows a user at one site to interact with a remote timesharing system at another site as if the user's terminal were connected directly to the remote computer. Terminal A device that allows you to send commands to a computer somewhere else. 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. Text Search Engine Software applications that allow the systematic searching of on-line documents. Examples are Alta Vista and Yahoo. Thread A collection of articles all dealing with a single posting or e-mail message. U 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 Upload Transfer a file from your computer system to a remote system. URL (Uniform Resource Locator) The address to a source of information on the Internet. A URL is the standard way to give a resource address on the Web. 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. V 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. W WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers) A commercial database system that indexes large quantities of information and then makes those indices searchable across networks such as the Internet. A prominent feature of WAIS is that the search results are ranked ('scored') according to how relevant the 'hits' are, and that subsequent searches can find 'more stuff like that last batch' and thus refine the search process. WAN (Wide Area Network) Any network that covers an area larger than a single building or campus. Web Crawler A Web-search engine or "index", it is searchable by entering the words you want to look for, and brings up the URLs that have those words associated with them. Visit Web Crawler via http://www.webcrawler.co Workstation A networked personal computing device with more power than a standard IBM PC or Macintosh. Typically, a workstation has an operating system such as unix that is capable of running several tasks at the same time. It has several megabytes of memory and a large, high-resolution display. Examples are Sun workstations and Digital DECstations. World Wide Web A distributed HyperText-based information system conceived at CERN to provide its user community with an easy way to access global information. WRT With respect to. Y Yahoo A Web search engine or "index", it is searchable by entering the words you want to look for, and brings up the URLs that have those words associated with them. The site URL is: http://www.yahoo.com . [LINK]-[USEMAP] WPS Home [INLINE] Instructional Technology Home [LINK] Top