Glossary

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

A

Active X - This set of technologies from Microsoft provides tools for linking desktop applications to the World Wide Web. Using a variety of programming tools--including Java, Visual Basic, and C++--developers can create interactive Web content. For instance, ActiveX technology can allow users to view Word and Excel documents directly in a browser.

ADSL -Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line  Like ISDN, ADSL uses standard phone lines to deliver high-speed data communications. But while ISDN's transmission speed is limited to 64 kbps, ADSL technology can deliver upstream (from the user) speeds of 640 kbps and downstream (to the user) speeds of more than 6 mbps. Even better, ADSL uses the portion of a phone line's bandwidth not utilized by voice, allowing for simultaneous voice and data transmission.

Anonymous re-mailer - An anonymous remailer is a computer that strips away identifying information (such as your email address) before passing your message on to an email address or a newsgroup. When you send mail using a remailer, the From: field of your message becomes a made-up address like 12xyx@remailer.com.

There are actually two kinds of services called anonymous remailers. The first is truly anonymous: no one anywhere knows your identity. With the second, called pseudo-anonymous or sometimes pseudonymous, the owner of the service knows your identity and can be forced in a court of law to reveal it. Most truly anonymous services are free (it's difficult to bill an unknown, unnamed client), but they often require some skill and effort to use. Many pseudo-anonymous services charge a fee, but are more user-friendly.

Applet - Applet is a diminutive form of app (application), and it refers to simple, single-function programs that often ship with a larger product. Programs such as Windows' Calculator, File Manager, and Notepad are examples of applets.

ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange - Bland, unformatted text files are best saved in ASCII (pronounced "askee") format. But ASCII is more than a text file format--it's a standard developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to define how computers write and read characters. The ASCII set of 128 characters includes letters, numbers, punctuation, and control codes (such as a character that marks the end of a line). Each letter or other character is represented by a number: an uppercase A, for example, is the number 65, and a lowercase z is the number 122. Most operating systems use the ASCII standard, except for Windows NT, which uses the suitably larger and newer Unicode standard.

Attachment  - Any file linked to an email message is an attachment. Many mail packages use MIME encoding to attach files.

B

Bandwidth - In a general sense, this term describes information-carrying capacity. It can apply to telephone or network wiring as well as system buses, radio frequency signals, and monitors. Bandwidth is most accurately measured in cycles per second, or hertz (Hz), which is the difference between the lowest and highest frequencies transmitted. But it's also common to use bits or bytes per second instead.

Browser - If you can read this, it's highly likely that you're using a Web browser. In brief, a browser is your interface to the World Wide Web; it interprets hypertext links and lets you view sites and navigate from one Internet node to another. Among the companies that produce browsers are NCSA Mosaic, Netscape, and Microsoft, as well as commercial services like CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online.

Browser Sniffing - Browser sniffing describes the process by which a Web site detects which versions of various browsers users are running, in order to determine whether or not they can access certain Web site features. Browser sniffing--usually accomplished with JavaScript--can also be used to detect whether or not a user has a specific plug-in required to access the site.

C

Cache - Caches come in many types, but they all work the same way: they store information where you can get to it fast. A Web browser cache stores the pages, graphics, sounds, and URLs of online places you visit on your hard drive; that way, when you go back to the page, everything doesn't have to be downloaded all over again. Since disk access is much faster than Internet access, this speeds things up. Of course, disk access is slower than RAM access, so there's also disk caching, which stores information you might need from your hard disk in faster RAM.

CGI - common gateway interface - The CGI standard lays down the rules for running external programs in a Web HTTP server. External programs are called gateways because they open up an outside world of information to the server.

Chat - This rather generic term has come to describe one of the more popular activities on the Internet. Using special software, Internet users can enter chat areas or "virtual spaces," where they can communicate in real time. While most chat software only lets users talk by typing, more advanced products assign avatars, 2D or 3D characters, to each participant. These avatars may even have expressions selected by the chatters. The most advanced products not only use avatars, but also let users with sound cards speak to each other.

Client - The customer side of a client/server setup. To confuse matters, when you log on to a server, the word client can refer to you, to your computer, or to the software running on your computer. For example, to download something from an ftp site, you use ftp client software.+

Cookie - According to Netscape, cookies are a "general mechanism which server side connections can use to both store and retrieve information on the client side of the connection." In English, that means cookies are small data files written to your hard drive by some Web sites when you view them in your browser. These data files contain information the site can use to track such things as passwords, lists of pages you've visited, and the date when you last looked at a certain page.

Cyberspace - Science fiction writer William Gibson coined the term cyberspace in the perennial favorite novel Neuromancer. Gibson used the word to describe a virtual world of computer networks that his cyberpunk heroes "jacked into." Everyone else uses the word cyberspace loosely to refer to virtual reality, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and many other kinds of computer systems that users become immersed in. It's about as ill-defined a term as information superhighway, but it's much hipper.

D

Data packet - Although your computer and modem can send data one character at a time, when you're surfing the Internet, downloading files, or sending email, it's more efficient to send information in larger blocks called data packets. Modems generally send packets of around 64 characters along with some extras for error checking. When downloading files using a protocol like Xmodem, however, the packets are larger. And when using Internet protocols such as TCP/IP, the packets are larger still--around 1,500 characters.

Digital certificate - Citing concerns about security, many people are still wary of online transactions. In an attempt to assuage those fears, software vendors, security specialists, and online vendors have developed the concept of digital certificates. A digital certificate is a password-protected file that includes a variety of information: the name and email address of the certificate holder, an encryption key that can be used to verify the digital signature of the holder, the name of the company issuing the certificate, and the period during which the certificate is valid. Certificate authorities (CAs) gather information about a person or company and then issue certificates. These certificates can be used as online identification, much in the same way a driver's license can verify your identity in the physical world. If an email message or order form comes through with an attached digital certificate, the recipient can be more confident that the document is genuine. Several technologies (including SET, SSL, and Authenticode) are currently competing for market share, each hoping to become the certificate of choice.

Digital signature - Forgery is a growing concern among Netizens. After all, who's to say that a message with your name on it is really from you and not somebody pretending to be you? Digital signatures are a means of proving that a file or email message belongs to a specific person, much as a driver's license proves identity in real life. Digital signatures have the added benefit of verifying that your message has not been tampered with. When you sign a message, a hash function--a computation that leaves a specific code, or "digital fingerprint"--is applied to it. If the fingerprint on the recipient's message doesn't match the original fingerprint, the message has been altered.

Digital signatures are often used in combination with strong-encryption software to create a secure channel of communication, in which both privacy and identity are protected.

DNS - domain name system - When you send email or point a browser to an Internet domain such as cnet.com, the domain name system translates the names into Internet addresses (a series of numbers looking something like this: 123.123.23.2). The term refers to two things: the conventions for naming hosts and the way the names are handled across the Internet.

Domain name - Looking for a domain name? You'll find it to the right of the @ sign in an email address, or about ten characters into a URL. CNET's domain name is cnet.com. The domain name of daemous@pentagon.io.com is io.com. Domain names are issued by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and they come with different extensions based on whether the domain belongs to a commerical enterprise (.com), an educational establishment (.edu), a government body (.gov), the military (.mil), a network (.net), or a nonprofit organization (.org). Some domains use a geographical notation too (such as the San Francisco, California-based well.sf.ca.us).

E

email - electronic mail - Whenever you send messages to people using a computer and they read it later, you've sent a piece of email. You can send email in several ways--across a local area network, via the Internet, or through an online service like CompuServe or America Online--and you can send it to a single recipient or to a whole slew of them. But all email behaves pretty much the same way: you send it to a virtual mailbox, and the recipient has to pick it up or can use software that does it automatically.

Encryption - Encryption is the process of changing data into a form that can be read only by the intended receiver. To decipher the message, the receiver of the encrypted data must have the proper decryption key. In traditional encryption schemes, the sender and the receiver use the same key to encrypt and decrypt data. Public-key encryption schemes use two keys: a public key, which anyone may use, and a corresponding private key, which is possessed only by the person who created it. With this method, anyone may send a message encrypted with the owner's public key, but only the owner has the private key necessary to decrypt it. PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and DES (data encryption standard) are two of the most popular public-key encryption schemes.

Extranet - Companies often use extranets to provide nonpublic information to a select group of people, such as business partners or customers. So while an extranet may look like an ordinary Web site, you have to enter a password or use digital encryption to access it. For example, Federal Express's customers can track packages on the company's extranet by simply entering a tracking number. And Bank of America's extranet lets users transfer funds or look up account balances online. Using an extranet can help companies save money by allowing customers to find information themselves, without having to call and talk to a person.

F

FAQs - frequently asked questions - These text files are supposed to answer all the questions a newcomer to an online site might have. Designed to cut down on basic tech support queries, FAQs can be organized in virtually any structure, and they often cover a far wider range of subjects than just basic site orientation. You can either pronounce it "facks" or sound out each letter.

Firewall - If you want to protect any networked server from damage (intentional or otherwise) by those who log in to it, you put up a firewall. This could be a dedicated computer equipped with security measures such as a dial-back feature, or it could be software-based protection called defensive coding.

Finger - Finger is a program that you point at the username of someone on a networked system. It uncovers that person's full name, most recent log-in time, and other information. It's also used as a verb, meaning to apply the program to a username.

FTP - file transfer protocol - This Internet protocol is used to copy files between computers--usually a client and an archive site. It's old-fashioned, it's a bit on the slow side, it doesn't support compression, and it uses cryptic Unix command parameters. But the good news is that you can download shareware or freeware apps that shield you from the complexities of Unix, and you can connect to FTP sites using a Web browser

Flame - When email or (more often) postings on bulletin boards or community areas get heated and abusive, the participants are said to flame each other. Flaming is a vitriolic personal attack on another individual--and when a flamer is flamed back, the exchange is called a flame war.

Freeware - Freeware is software you can download, pass around, and distribute without payment. However, it's still copyrighted, so you can't turn around and decompile it or sell it as your own (as you can with a public domain program).

G

Gateway - A gateway is a program or piece of hardware that passes data between networks. You'll see this term most often when you either log in to an Internet site or when you're passing email between different servers.

H

Hacker - A person who attempts to gain access to computer systems he / she is not authorised to do so. 

Http - hypertext transfer protocol - The protocol used to transmit and receive all data over the World Wide Web. When you type a URL into your browser, you're actually sending an HTTP request to a Web server for a page of information (that's why URLs all begin with "http://"). HTTP1.1, the latest version, is currently undergoing revisions to make it work more efficiently with TCP/IP

HTML - Hypertext Markup Language - As its name suggests, HTML is a collection of formatting commands that create hypertext documents--Web pages, to be exact. When you point your Web browser to a URL, the browser interprets the HTML commands embedded in the page and uses them to format the page's text and graphic elements. HTML commands cover many types of text formatting (bold and italic text, lists, headline fonts in various sizes, and so on), and also have the ability to include graphics and other non-text elements.

Hyperlink - Hyperlinks are the easy-to-spot underlined words or phrases you click in World Wide Web documents to jump to another screen or page. Hyperlinks contain HTML-coded references that point to other Web pages, which your browser then jumps to. Also called anchors.

I

Internet - The Internet originated in 1969, in the midst of the Cold War, as a "nuke-proof" communications network. As you might guess, it received most of its early financing from the U.S. defense department. Now, however, it consists of countless networks and computers across the world that allow millions of people to share information. The lines that carry the majority of the information are know as the Internet backbone. While the government used to run things, now major Internet service providers (ISPs) such as MCI, GTE, Sprint, UUNET, and ANS own portions of the backbone--a good thing as they have the motivation and the revenue to maintain the quality of these large networks.

IP Address - Internet protocol address - This address is a unique string of numbers that identifies a computer on the Internet. These numbers are usually shown in groups separated by periods, like this: 123.123.23.2. All resources on the Internet must have an IP address--or else they're not on the Internet at all.

IRC - Internet Relay Chat - IRC is a way of hooking up with other Net users to exchange written comments--live and in real time. To do this, you need an IRC client and an IRC server. Once connected to the server, you join a channel, or discussion group, which can include people from all over the world. IRC channels may hold discussions about anything under the sun (and some topics that shouldn't see the light of day). IRC can be accessed by a variety of downloadable software on both the PC and Mac.

ISDN - Integrated Services Digital Network - The plain old telephone system doesn't handle large quantities of data, and the phone companies realized this a long time ago. So the ISDN spec was hammered out in 1984 to allow for wide-bandwidth digital transmission using the public switched telephone network. Under ISDN, a phone call can transfer 64 kilobits of digital data per second. But it's not always easy to adopt.

ISP - Internet Service Provider - Once upon a time, you could only connect to the Internet if you belonged to a major university or had a note from the Pentagon. Not anymore: ISPs have arrived to act as your (ideally) user-friendly front end to all that the Internet offers. Most ISPs have a network of servers (mail, news, Web, and the like), routers, and modems attached to a permanent, high-speed Internet "backbone" connection. Subscribers can then dial into the local network to gain Internet access--without having to maintain servers, file for domain names, or learn Unix.

J

JavaScript - Designed by Sun Microsystems and Netscape as an easy-to-use adjunct to the Java programming language, JavaScript code can be added to standard HTML pages to create interactive documents. As a result, JavaScript has found considerable use in the creation of interactive Web-based forms. Most modern browsers, including those from Microsoft and Netscape, contain JavaScript support.

K

Kbps - Your modem's speed is measured in the number of bits it can transfer in a second. Modems rated in kilobits per second are now the standard.

L

Linux - What do you do if you're not happy with any of the current operating systems? You build your own, of course. That's exactly what Linus Torvalds did. His freely distributed, Intel-processor-based alternative to Unix, Linux (pronounced lih-nucks), is currently used by hundreds of thousands--and possibly millions--of people around the world. While Linux began life primarily as a hobby for supergeeks, the operating system has made some inroads into corporate life, particularly as an inexpensive substitute for high-priced Unix Web servers. Linux is available from a number of vendors for several hardware platforms, including Intel x86, DEC Alpha, Sun Sparc, and Motorola PowerPC.

M

MIME - multipurpose Internet mail extensions - MIME has absolutely nothing to do with Marcel Marceau. It's a way to extend the power of Web browsers to handle graphics, sound, multimedia--anything but text. (Remember, HTML handles nothing but text--everything else is an extension.) MIME is also used for binary email attachments. Browsers recognize MIME types in categories and file types, separated by a slash (such as image/gif). If you've registered a MIME type, the browser decodes the file and launches a helper application

N

NetBEUI - Network BIOS Enhanced User Interface - IBM developed this standard protocol, which is a set of rules that an operating system uses to control how computers on a network to talk to each other. This protocol is now also used by Microsoft and Novell on many network operating systems including LAN Server, LAN Manager, Windows NT, and Windows 95.

Newsgroup - Think of newsgroups as worldwide bulletin boards, organized more or less stringently around a topic. Some are technical, others silly--and some you don't even want to know about.

O

P

Ping - packet Internet groper - When submarine crews wanted to test the distance of an object, they would send a sonar "ping" and wait to hear the echo. In the computer world, Ping is a program that "bounces" a request off of another computer over a network to see if the remote computer is still responding. If the ping comes back, the remote computer is still alive.

POP - Post Office Protocol - The current champ in Internet email mailbox access standards, but its limitations--basically, you connect to a server and download all your messages, which are then deleted from the server--discourage flexibility. Of course, some clients let you leave all messages on the server, and/or refuse to download messages above a certain size. Still, as messages become longer--with multimedia (such as sound or video) objects and the likes--we'll want some flexibility in what we retrieve and when we retrieve it. That's where IMAP comes in. The current version of POP is POP3.

Protocol - Computers can't just throw data at each other any old way. Because so many different types of computers and operating systems connect via modems or other connections, they have to follow communications rules called protocols. The Internet is a very heterogeneous collection of networked computers and is full of different protocols, including PPP, TCP/IP, SLIP, and ftp.

Proxy servers - A proxy server is a system that caches items from other servers to speed up access. On the Web, a proxy first attempts to find data locally, and if it's not there, fetches it from the remote server where the data resides permanently.

Public domain - Of all the kinds of software or information you can download, public domain has the fewest strings attached. With shareware, you're expected to pay a fee. With freeware, you may face other restrictions, and there's still a copyright attached. With public domain downloads (also called downloads in the pubic domain), there are no copyright restrictions whatsoever.

Q

R

Resolution - Resolution is a measure of graphics that's used to describe what a printer can print, a scanner can scan, and a monitor can display. In printers and scanners, resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi)--the number of pixels a device can fit in an inch of space. A monitor's resolution refers to the number of pixels in the whole image, because the number of dots per inch varies depending on the screen's dimensions. For example, a resolution of 1,280 by 1,024 means that 1,024 lines are drawn from the top to the bottom of the screen, and each of these lines is made up of 1,280 separate pixels--and in turn, each dot may have any number of combinations of red, green, and blue intensities.

Common resolutions in the PC world include 640 by 480 (also called VGA resolution; appropriate for a 14-inch monitor), 800 by 600 (appropriate for a 15-inch monitor), 1,024 by 768 (appropriate for a 17-inch monitor), and 1,280 by 1,024.

Router - This piece of hardware does what it says: it routes data from a local area network (LAN) to a phone line's long distance line. Routers also act as traffic cops, allowing only authorized machines to transmit data into the local network so that private information can remain secure. In addition to supporting these dial-in and leased connections, routers also handle errors, keep network usage statistics, and handle security issues.

S

SHTTP - secure hypertext transfer protocol - This protocol was developed by Enterprise Integration Technologies to keep your money safe on its way from your wallet to a commercial transaction on the Internet.

SMTP - simple mail transfer protocol - When you're exchanging electronic mail on the Internet, SMTP is what keeps the process orderly. It's a protocol that regulates what goes on between the mail servers.

Spam - spiced ham - Hormel's famous can o' additives has given its name to something almost as disgusting: junk email. Spam can be a mass mailing to bulletin boards, newsgroups, or lists of people. But spam is never welcome: if you spam or get spammed, flame wars can ensue.

Spider - Also known as a Web spider, this class of robot software explores the World Wide Web by retrieving a document and following all the hyperlinks in it. Web sites tend to be so well linked that a spider can cover vast amounts of the Internet by starting from just a few sites. After following the links, spiders generate catalogs that can be accessed by search engines. Popular search sites like Alta Vista, Excite, and Lycos use this method.

SSL - Secure Sockets Layer - SSL is a transaction security standard developed by Netscape Communications to enable commercial transactions to take place over the otherwise notoriously non-secure Internet. It's one of a few competing security standards.

Swap file - A swap file is an area on your hard disk used as virtual memory. It's called a swap file because virtual memory management software swaps data between it and main memory (RAM). The swap file is often overlooked as a security vulnerability.

T

Trojan

TCP/IP - transmission control protocol/Internet protocol - These two protocols were developed by the U.S. military to allow computers to talk to each other over long distance networks. IP is responsible for moving packets of data between nodes. TCP is responsible for verifying delivery from client to server. TCP/IP forms the basis of the Internet, and is built into every common modern operating system (including all flavors of Unix, the Mac OS, and the latest versions of Windows).

Traceroute - Originally a Unix program, Traceroute is now available on most platforms. Traceroute is a utility that allows you to see how and where information travels on the Net. It traces the path a packet takes as it is sent from your computer to a destination computer (such as the server for a Web site). When encountering a particularly slow Web site, a Traceroute program can help you evaluate which link in the Internet chain is responsible for the lag time.

U

URL - uniform resource locator - universal resource locator - URLs are the Internet equivalent of addresses. How do they work? Like other types of addresses, they move from the general to the specific (from zip code to recipient, so to speak). Take this URL, for example:

http://www.cnet.com/Resources/index.html

First you have the protocol:

http:/

then the server address or domain:

/www.cnet.com

and finally the directory:

/Resources/

in which the file index.html resides.

Two debates rage: first, does the U stand for uniform or universal? Universal was the original definition of choice but was deemed by most to be too ambitious, and the more frequently used uniform was instated by the now-defunct URI Working Group.

Second, is URL pronounced "you are ell," or does it rhyme with hurl? Both pronunciations are widely used.

V

VPN - Virtual Private Network - A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, is a private network of computers that's at least partially connected by public phone lines. A good example would be a private office LAN that allows users to log in remotely over the Internet (an open, public system). VPNs use encryption and secure protocols like PPTP to ensure that data transmissions are not intercepted by unauthorized parties.

Virus - A malicious piece of code that infects computers. It is most commonly transmitted by e-mail and its effects can range from mildly annoying to total devastation.

W

Whois - An Internet directory service, similar to finger, used to look up names of people on a remote server. You can use whois through third-party utilities on Windows and Macintosh machines, and through the command-line interface in Unix. Most commonly, you use whois to look up domain ownerships and contact addresses. For example, whois cnet.com would return CNET's DNS and contact information.

WinSock - Windows socket services - WinSock is a piece of software that acts as the middleman between Windows applications (such as ftp, a Web browser, Telnet, and so forth) and the Internet protocol. As the name implies, WinSock is used with Microsoft Windows, and most commonly with TCP/IP (though other protocols are also supported). WinSock came about to make life easier for Windows programmers designing networking applications. The software is typically stored in a file called winsock.dll. Trumpet is a popular, 16-bit shareware version of WinSock, and Microsoft included a 32-bit version in Windows 95

World Wide Web - Also known as the WWW, the W3, or most often simply as the Web, it was originally developed by CERN labs in Geneva, Switzerland. Continuing development of the Web is overseen by the World Wide Web Consortium. The Web can be described (dryly) as a client/server hypertext system for retrieving information across the Internet. On the Web, everything is represented as hypertext (in HTML format) and is linked to other documents by their URLs. The Web encompasses its native http protocol, as well as ftp, Gopher, and Telnet. 

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