Glossary
Glossary of terms used on this site
There are 14 entries in this glossary.All
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| ADSL |
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is one form of the Digital Subscriber Line technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. It does this by utilising frequencies that are not used by a voice telephone call. A DSL filter, allows a single telephone connection to be used for both ADSL service and voice calls at the same time. ADSL can generally only be distributed over short distances from the telephone exchange, typically less than 4 kilometres. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AsymmetricDigitalSubscriber_Line |
| ASCII |
(American Standard Code for Information Interchange) This is the defacto 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. |
| Bandwidth |
How much stuff you can send through a connection. Usually measured in bits-per-second (bps.) A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move about 57,000 bits in one second. Full-motion full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression. |
| Broadband |
Generally refers to connections to the Internet with much greater bandwidth than you can get with a dial up modem. There is no specific definition of the speed of a "broadband" connection but in general any Internet connection using DSL is considered a broadband connection. |
| 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. Depending on the type of Cookie used, and the Browsers' settings, the Browser may accept or not accept the Cookie, and may save the Cookie for either a short time or a long time. Cookies might contain information such as login or registration information, online "shopping cart" information, user preferences, etc. When a Server receives a request from a Browser that includes a Cookie, the Server is able to use the information stored in the Cookie. For example, the Server might customize what is sent back to the user, or keep a log of particular users' requests. Cookies are usually set to expire after a predetermined amount of time and are usually saved in memory until the Browser software is closed down, at which time they may be saved to disk if their "expire time" has not been reached. 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, & to improve your WWW experience |
| DHCP |
(Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) DHCP is a protocol by which a machine can obtain an IP number (and other network configuration information) from a server on the local network. Normally this will be your Modem or Router |
| DNS |
(Domain Name System) The Domain Name System is the system that translates Internet domain names into IP numbers. A "DNS Server" is a server that performs this kind of translation. We operate DNS servers, which most of our customers connect to. There are also other DNS servers available for use by anyone - for example OpenDNS |
| FTP |
There are many ways to transfer data from computer to computer over the Internet, but one of the most common is via the file transfer protocol or FTP. Usually, when people say FTP, they're actually referring to a program that uses the protocol to transfer files. These programs are known as FTP clients. Common uses of FTP clients include transferring files from a computer to a web server i.e. updating a web site and transferring files from a work computer to a home computer. On the corporate side, FTP is used to send large amounts of data to vendors for processing or to backup centres. Although other techniques for sharing data have emerged in recent years, FTP still remains the simplest and one of the most reliable methods. |
| HTML |
Short for Hypertext Markup Language, HTML is what web designers and developers write when they create web pages. HTML isn't really a programming language as it is missing many of the standard features associated with programming languages. It is more a way to describe how things should appear in a web browser. With it you can make sections of text bold or make the typeface bigger. Purists believe that HTML shouldn't be used to specify content layout. They feel that the content should flow freely and fill the screen in whatever way best suits the end-user. However, in practice, most web designers do attempt to control layout, feeling that expressing their message in a specific and controlled manner is a worthwhile pursuit. To build features such as forums, shopping carts, and registration forms requires technologies other than HTML. It is best to think of HTML as the glue that binds all this functionality in to something that a web browser can interpret and display for the end-user. |
| Internet |
The Internet, sometimes called simply "the Net," is a worldwide system of computer networks - a network of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other computer (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers). It was conceived by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. government in 1969 and was first known as the ARPANET. The original aim was to create a network that would allow users of a research computer at one university to be able to "talk to" research computers at other universities. A side benefit of ARPANet's design was that, because messages could be routed or rerouted in more than one direction, the network could continue to function even if parts of it were destroyed in the event of a military attack or other disaster. Today, the Internet is a public, cooperative, and self-sustaining facility accessible to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Physically, the Internet uses a portion of the total resources of the currently existing public telecommunication networks. Technically, what distinguishes the Internet is its use of a set of protocols called Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). |
| ISP |
An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is the company that sits in between the Internet and someone that wants to use the Internet. These companies are often the phone or cable companies themselves, but sometimes they are independent providers of Internet access. Of course, if they're independent vendors they still need to work with the phone and cable companies since they are the ones that have the communications infrastructure. At the consumer level, ISPs provide Internet access along with basic services such as e-mail accounts. At the corporate level, ISPs provide a guaranteed level of service, configuration flexibility, and a lot of bandwidth. As you can imaging, corporations pay much more than consumers. |
| Naked ADSL |
Naked ADSL is a digital subscriber line (DSL) without a PSTN (regular telephone) service — or the associated dial tone. In other words, only an Internet service is provided on the local copper loop. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_adsl |
| Spam |
Generally speaking, spam is unsolicited, bulk e-mail. Similar to how your mailing address is used, an e-mail address gets on to one or more mailing lists which are then used repeatedly to send advertising. Some of the e-mails are legitimate sales offers, but a large portion seem to be of dubious value. It's this second type that often annoys people enough to form anti-spam groups and to ask governments to create anti-spam legislation. Unlike junk mail which the senders must pay to have delivered, there is no charge for sending spam. Spam actually costs companies and end-users money in terms of time and potentially increased internet fees associated with the added bandwidth and hardware required to process all the spam. Spam has become such a significant problem that a niche market has been created to develop anti-spam technologies. |
| WWW |
A technical definition of the World Wide Web is: all the resources and users on the Internet that are using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). A broader definition comes from the organization that Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee helped found, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): "The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge." |