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Network

A set of computers that all use the same protocol in order to exchange information among themselves.

Newbie or Newby

A newcomer to the nets, who reveals his or her inexperience by lack of knowledge of net conventions, netiquette, vocabulary, and know-how.

nslookup

A common Internet utility like ping and traceroute. Given an IP address or a DNS address, it will look up and show the corresponding DNS or IP address. There are nslookup utility programs available for every operating system, which you can use with a PPP or networked or shell account. The commonly used FTP program WS_FTP Pro includes a number of utilities including nslookup.

Object-oriented

A method of software-development that groups related functions and data into reusable chunks. Properly handled, object-oriented programming can reduce development time on new projects.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

When your computer gets a fax or scans in text, all it sees are graphical bits on a virtual page. That text is not usable, searchable, or editable. If you pass the page through an OCR program, the software converts the shapes on it into a text document. However, few documents are perfectly recognized and the errors are frequent if the type is small or the scan unclear. But the conversion is often faster than typing text manually.

Optical fiber

Optical fiber cables consist of thin filaments of glass (or other transparent materials), which can carry beams of light. A laser transmitter encodes frequency signals into pulses of light and sends them down the optical fiber to a receiver, which translates the light signals back into frequencies. Less susceptible to noise and interference than other kinds of cables, optical fibers can transmit data greater distances without amplification. But because the glass filaments are fragile, optical fiber must be run underground rather than overhead on telephone poles.

OS (operating system)

A computer by itself is essentially dumb bits of wire and silicon. An operating system knows how to talk to this hardware and can manage a computer's functions, such as allocating memory, scheduling tasks, accessing disk drives, and supplying a user interface. Without an operating system, software developers would have to write programs that directly accessed hardware--essentially reinventing the wheel with every new program. With an operating system, such as Windows NT or Mac OS 8, developers can write to a common set of programming interfaces called APIs and let the operating system do the dirty work of talking to the hardware.

Password

Secret code of letters and numbers needed to gain access to a time-sharing computer or FTP system, or to protect Web pages.

Perl

Perl is a general-purpose programming language invented in 1987 by Larry Wall. With over one million users worldwide, it has become the language of choice for Web development, text processing, Internet services, mail filtering, graphical programming, systems administration, and every other task requiring portable and easily-developed solutions.

PHP

PHP  (Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open source server side programming language extensively used for web scripts and to process data passed via the Common Gateway Interface from HTML forms etc. PHP can be written as scripts that reside on the server and may produce HTML output that downloads to the web browser. Alternatively, PHP can be embedded within HTML pages that are then saved with a .php file extension.

Ping

Packet InterNet Groper is a program and UNIX command that helps testing and debugging network and/or Internet connections. An 'Echo' command is sent to a specified computer and then waits for a response. The result is a report that displays the success or failure, usually a report back of a timed response in seconds, of the intended action.

Protocol

The rules make possible the exchange of messages between users on the Internet, or within any given network.

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.

Registry

The Windows Registry stores system configuration details so that Windows looks and behaves just as you want it to. The Registry stores user profile information such as wallpaper, color schemes, and desktop arrangements in a file called user.dat. And it stores hardware- and software-specific details, such as device management and file extension associations, in a file called system.dat. In many ways, the Registry (Windows 95 and later) replaces functions of win.ini and system.ini from earlier versions of Windows, though these files persist because so many Windows applications refer to them. Registry details can be edited using a program called RegEdit (which ships with Windows 95 and later) and exported to text format as a file with the extension REG.

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.

Search Engine

A tool or program which allows keyword searching for relevant sites or information on the Internet. General and topic-specific search engines are prevalent today, for example, Education World, WebCrawler, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo are examples of search engines.

Service provier

A company that provides dial-up or direct access to the Internet for a fee. Sometimes referred to as ISP (internet service provider).

Shareware

Copyrighted software that is available for personal use for a small fee, and often downloadable from the Internet.

TCP

Stands for Transmission Control Protocol. both the protocol and software that ensure that data sent over the Net arrive in the correct order.

TCP/IP

Short for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. A group of protocols that specify how computers communicate over the Internet. All computers on the Internet need TCP/IP software.

Telnet

An Internet command that allows your computer to directly connect and interact with remote computers, often through a text-based 'terminal' environment. Often involves the need for passwords and access information.

Unix

A computer operating system developed by AT&T Bell Labs and used to develop the Internet. It is no longer the sole operating system used to run servers.

Upload

Transferring a file or files from the user's computer to a remote computer.

URL

Short for Uniform Resource Locator. A string of characters used to uniquely identify a page of information on the WWW. This information is used by browser software to find other WWW, FTP, telnet, gopher, etc. sites on the Internet.

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