Have you every wondered what all these terms that internet companies commonly refer to actually means?

This section contains definitions of the most popular terms used on the web. It is provided to help you on your way in understanding what all these name refer to and actually mean, and hopefully help you understand the jargon that a lot of service providers commonly use on their websites.

Anchor

a synonym for hyperlink.

Archie

a method of searching for files on anonymous FTP servers.

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

the amount of 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.

Baud

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).

Bit

(Binary DigIT) - a single digit number in base-2, in other words, either a 1 (one) or a 0 (zero). The smallest unit of computerized data. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits-per-second.

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 transmission method in which the networks range of transmission frequencies is divided into separate channels and each channel is used to send a different signal. Broadband is often used to send different types of signals simultaneously.

Browser

a World Wide Web client (program). An information retrieval tool - used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.

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.

CGI

(Common Gateway Interface) - usually a CGI program is a small program that takes data from a web server and does something with it, like putting the content of a form into an e-mail message, or turning the data into a database query.

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.

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.

Cookie

the most common meaning of “Cookie” on the Internet refers to a piece of information sent by a Web Server to a Web Browser that the Browser software is expected to save and to send back to the Server whenever the browser makes additional requests from the Server. Cookies might contain information such as login or registration information, online “shopping cart” information, user preferences, etc. Cookies do not read your hard drive and send your life story to the CIA, but they can be used to gather more information about a user than would be possible without them.

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.

Dial-up Connection

the most popular form of Net connection for the home user, this is a connection from your computer to a host computer over standard telephone lines.

Direct Connection

a permanent connection between your computer system and the Internet. This is sometimes referred to as a leased-line connection because the line is leased from the telephone company.

DSL

(Digital Subscriber Line) - a method for moving data over regular phone lines. A DSL circuit is much faster than a regular phone connection, and the wires coming into the subscriber’s premises are the same (copper) wires used for regular phone service. A DSL circuit must be configured to connect two specific locations, similar to a leased line. A commonly discussed configuration of DSL allows downloads at speeds of up to 1.544 megabits (not megabytes) per second, and uploads at speeds of 128 kilobits per second. This arrangement is called ADSL: “Asymmetric” Digital Subscriber Line.

Domain

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. For example, the domain names:

joebloggs.co.uk
mail.bloggs.co.uk
workshop.bloggs.co.uk

can all refer to the same machine, but each domain name can refer to no more than one machine.

Download

To transfer to your computer a copy of a file that resides on another computer.

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).

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.

Fire Wall

a combination of hardware and software that separates a LAN into two or more parts for security purposes.

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.

FTP

(File Transfer Protocol) - a method of transferring files to and from remote computers.

Gb

(Gigabyte) - 1000 or 1024 Megabytes, depending on who is measuring.

GIF

(Graphics Interchange Format) - a popular and common image file format.

History List

a list of Document Titles and URLs Mosaic keeps in memory that represents the visited URLs during a given Internet session.

Hit

as used in reference to the World Wide Web, “hit” means a single request from a web browser for a single item from a web server; thus in order for a web browser to display a page that contains 3 graphics, 4 “hits” would occur at the server: 1 for the HTML page, and one for each of the 3 graphics. “Hits” are often used as a very rough measure of load on a server, e.g. “Our server has been getting 300,000 hits per month.” Because each “hit” can represent anything from a request for a tiny document (or even a request for a missing document) all the way to a request that requires some significant extra processing (such as a complex search request), the actual load on a machine from 1 hit is almost impossible to define.

Home Page

A top level document of a organisation or a document that a user frequently visits. By default most Internet browsers points to a user-defind home page,however you can define anyone's home page as your home page. The first (start) page people see when the first start an Internet session.

HTML

(HyperText Markup Language) - the rules (coding language) that govern the way we create documents so that can be read by a WWW Browser. Most documents that are displayed by Internet browsers are HTML documents. These documents are characterised by the .html or .htm file extension. For example: somepage.html or somepage.htm. One ability of HTML is that you can interlink documents with "hyperlinks" so that a user can quickly 'link' to another section of the webpage, website or another internet site or file at a click of a button.

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

a commonly used link in a given web document to information within another web document or file. These links are usually represented by highlighted words or images. Enables the user to jump to another section, site etc.

Hypermedia

richly formatted documents containing a variety of information types, such as textual, image, movie, and audio. These information types are easily found through hyperlinks.

In-line Image

a graphic image that is displayed with an html document.

Internet

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.

Intranet

a private network inside a company or organisation that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use. Note that an Intranet may not actually be an internet -- it may simply be a network.

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 analogue 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.

ISP

(Internet Service Provider) - an institution that provides access and other services to the Internet in some form, usually for money, but no always!

Java

a network-oriented 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. Java is meant to be cross-browser compatible, the programme (or Applet) works the same regardless where you are running it.

JavaScript

a programming language that is mostly used in web pages, usually to add features that make the web page more interactive. When JavaScript is included in an HTML file it relies upon the browser to interpret the JavaScript. When JavaScript is combined with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and later versions of HTML (4.0 and later) the result is often called DHTML. JavaScript was invented by Netscape and was going to be called "LiveScript", but the name was changed to JavaScript to cash in on the popularity of Java. JavaScript and Java are two different programming languages. (Microsoft initially devised their own version called JScript, but now use the same standard format of JavaScript.

JPEG

(Joint Photographic Expert Group) - a very popular compressed image format.

Kb

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

LAN

(Local Area Network) - a computer network limited to the immediate (small) area, usually the same building or floor of a building or company.

Mail Alias

commonly used to refer to the name given before the @ sign of an e-mail address, such as joe.bloggs@yourdomain.co.uk, where joe.bloggs is the alias.

Mb

(Megabyte ) - a million bytes. Actually, technically, 1024 kilobytes.

MIME

(Multiple Internet Mail Extensions) - a method of identifying files such that the first packet of information received by a client, contains information about the type of file the server has sent. For example text, audio, movie, postscript, word document, etc.

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.

MPEG

(Moving Pictures Experts Group) - a method of storing movie files in digital format, there are various standards available, for example MPEG2, MPEG3, etc.

Netiquette

The rules or "etiquette" of the Internet.

Network

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.

PDF

(Portable Document Format) - a document format that can be read across various systems without using the formatting of the document. Developed by Adobe and can be read using Adobe Acrobat reader (provided free from their website - http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat).

Plug-In

A (usually small) piece of software that adds features to a larger piece of software. The idea behind plug-in’s is that a small piece of software is loaded into memory by the larger program, adding a new feature, and that users need only install the few plug-ins that they need, out of a much larger pool of possibilities. Plug-ins are usually created by people other than the publishers of the software the plug-in works with.

POP

(Point of Presence (also Post Office Protocol)) - 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 dial up phone lines. So if an Internet company says they will soon have a POP in London, it means that they will soon have a local phone number in London 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 Microsoft Outlook or 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.

Portal

usually used as a marketing term to described a Web site that is or is intended to be the first place people see when using the Web. Typically a "Portal site" has a catalog of web sites, a search engine, or both. A Portal site may also offer email and other service to entice people to use that site as their main "point of entry" (hence "portal") to the Web.

PostScript

a page description language developed by Adobe Systems.

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.

Protocol

a planned method of exchanging data over the Internet.

QuickTime

a method of storing and viewing movie and audio files in a digital format. Developed by Apple Computer.

Server

a computer that serves information and software to the Internet community. 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 servers to clients on the network.

SGML

(Standard Generalized Markup Language) - a International standard, a encoding scheme for creating textual information. HTML is a subset of SGML.

SMTP

(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) - the main protocol used to send electronic mail on the Internet. Almost all Internet email is sent and received by clients and servers using SMTP, thus if one wanted to set up an email server on the Internet one would look for email server software that supports SMTP.

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 sketch 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).

Surfing

Slang word for the process of moving around the web.

TCP/IP

(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) - a set of rules that establish the method with which data is transmitted over the Internet between two computers.

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 in an acceptable time.

Terabyte

in short, 1000 gigabytes.

TIFF

(Tag Image File Format) - a popular image format.

URL

(Uniform Resource Locator) - the address to a source of information. The URL contains four distinct parts, the protocol type, the machine name, the directory path and the file name. For example: http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/somedirectory/somepage.html.

WAN

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

Webmaster

this term refers to the person in charge of administrating a web site.

Web Page

a 'page' of information available to anyone via the Internet.

Web Site

a collection of web pages.

Web Space

this term refers to the allocated space from the service provider on their Internet servers.

WWW

(World Wide Web - W3 - "The Web") - frequently used (incorrectly) when referring to "The Internet", WWW has two major meanings - First, loosely used, a distributed HyperText-based information system to provide its user community an easy way to access global information 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.