Glossary

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All definitions from the Internet LiteracyConsultants(tm), Glossary of Internet Terms
Copyright ©1994-95 Matisse Enzer &Internet Literacy Consultants(tm)
[http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html]


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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.
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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.
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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.
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Baud

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 - so a 2400 bit-per-second modem actually runs at 300 baud, but it moves 4 bits per baud (4 x 300 = 2400 bits per second).
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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.
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Browser

A client program (software) that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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 (July 1995) connects roughly 60,000 independent networks into a vast global internet.
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internet (lower case i)

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

(Local Area Network) -- A computer network limited to the immediate area, usually the same building or floor of the building.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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Newsgroups

The name for discussion groups on Usenet.
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Node

Any single computer connected to a network.
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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.
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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.
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Router

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.
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Server

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." A single server machine could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different services to clients on the network.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 news: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.
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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 , maybe half. Usenet is completely decentralized, with over 10,000 discussion areas, called newsgroups.
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WAIS

(Wide Area Information Servers) -- A commercial software package that allows the indexing of huge quantities of information, and then making 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.
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WWW

(World Wide Web) Two meanings - First, loosely used: The whole constellation of resources that can be accessed using Gopher , FTP , HTTP , telnet , Usenet , WAIS and some other tools. Second, the universe of hypertext servers (HTTP servers ) which are the servers that allow text, graphics, sound files etc to be mixed together.
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