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 total amount of data that can be sent through a network connection in a certain time, usually measured in bits per second (bps), megabits per second (Mbps), or gigabits per second (Gbps). The bandwidth provides for a faster loading time for your web site. It is also important because most web hosts only allow a fixed amount of bandwidth each month. Going over the limit can be costly. Be sure to know your exact bandwidth limitations.
Baud - Unit of signaling speed equal to the number of discrete signal elements transmitted per second. Baud is synonymous with bits per second (bps). 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 - 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).
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.
Binary - Pertaining to a number system that has just two unique digits. Computers are based on the binary numbering system, which consists of just two unique numbers, 0 and 1.
Binary Mode - FTP client mode used to transfer binary files (multimedia files, executables and other data files). Not suitable for transferring normal text files.
Bit - Short for binary digit, the smallest unit of information on a machine. A single bit can hold only one of two values: 0 or 1.
BITNET - (Because It’s Time NETwork (or Because It’s There NETwork)) — A network of educational sites separate from the Internet, but e-mail is freely exchanged between BITNET and the Internet. Listservs, the most popular form of e-mail discussion groups, originated on BITNET. BITNET machines are usually mainframes running the VMS operating system, and the network is probably the only international network that is shrinking.
Bit rate - (The speed at which bits are transmitted over a communication link. Expressed in bits per second (bps).
Blog (Web Log), Blogger, Blogging - Blog, a contraction of ‘web ‘ and ‘ log ‘, describes a website consisting of date-related entries (or posts ). Blogs are typically of a personal nature, although their use by companies as a marketing tool is increasing. Categorizes blogs into ‘filter’ and ’short-form journal’ genres. In addition, new tools have created a new type of blog; ‘distributed conversation’.
Bookmark - Nearly all web browsers support a book marking feature that lets you save the address (URL) of a web page so that you can easily revisit the page at a later time.
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.
Bridge - A network device used to connect two LANs using different cabling.
Broadband - Broadband is a form of data transmission where a single medium (wire) can carry different types of information simultaneously. For example; a single cable may provide internet access, telephone and cable television.
Broadband is commonly used as an synonym for high-bandwidth. Broadband describes the properties of the medium used for data transmission; while bandwidth is the rate of data transfer
Broadcast - Sending a packet to all machines on the network.
Browser - Computer program that allows to search the World Wide Web and displays the content of the web pages. Examples are Mosaic, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera and Internet Explorer.
Browser sniffing - The process in which the web site tries to determine what kind of web browser the user is using. This is done to suit the website to the particular capabilities of the browser.
BTW - (By The Way) — A shorthand appended to a comment written in an online forum.
Burst - In web hosting, burst is when a client suddenly uses more bandwidth than is expected under its contract.Typically, the web hosting company expects this to happen occasionally and has set fees for the client depending on the bandwidth used.
Byte - A byte is composed of 8 bits or “on-off” signals. You can think of a byte as being the computer representation for a letter, like “A,” a number like “7,” or an instruction to multiply two numbers, like “3 * 6.” For the purposes of creating a Web site, the number of bytes will measure the size of your site in terms of disk space. For instance, if your Web hosting plan allows you to publish a 2 MB (Megabytes or million bytes) Web site, then essentially it can be made up of 2 million characters or instructions.
March 3rd, 2008
Active Channel - An Active Channel is a frequently updated information residing on a Web server. Users can subscribe to the channel if they have a CDF (Channel Definition Language) capable browser (e.g. Internet Explorer)
Active X - ActiveX is a set of technologies from Microsoft that enables interactive content for the World Wide Web. Before ActiveX, Web content was static, 2-dimensional text and graphics. With ActiveX, Web sites come alive using multimedia effects, interactive objects, and sophisticated applications that create a user experience comparable to that of high-quality CD-ROM titles. ActiveX provides the glue that ties together a wide assortment of technology building blocks to enable these “active” Web sites.
Address - Unique identifier of a web page. URL (Uniformed Resource Locator) is more frequently used for this purpose.
AND - (Advanced Digital Network). A 56kbps dedicated communication line.
ADO - Microsoft Data Access Component Used primarily as a scripting language interface to OLE DB or ODBC data access ActiveX or Active Data Objects.
ADSL - (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop). High speed Internet access using the telephone line. It uses line-adaptive modulation and provides data speeds from 384kbps to 1.5 Mbps (upstream and downstream speeds are usually different). Unlike the dial up, it doesn’t block the telephone line.
Alt Tag - HTML tag used to display alternative text for an image. This is useful if your visitor does not have images enabled in their browser or is using software to assist with the reading of your web pages.
Anonymous FTP (Anon FTP) - A method for downloading and uploading files using FTP protocol without having a username or a password. In place of a username, word “anonymous” is used, and in place of a password, email address is usually used. If a hosting plan offers this service, your users will be able to download or upload files with FTP without having their own account.
Anonymous re-mailer - A SMTP server that allows sending anonymous email messages. It removes or changes the “From” field of all messages that it processes.
ANSI - American National Standards Institute. The U.S. standards organization.
Apache - Apache is an open-source HTTP Web server software. It is usually run on Unix operating system versions like Linux or BSD, but it can also be run on Windows. It is a full-featured server with many powerful add-ons freely available. Apache’s major competitor is Microsoft’s IIS.
Applet - A program written in the Java to run within a web browser. Java applets begin execution with a series of init(), start(), and paint() methods. ;stop(), and destroy() methods are available. Every Java applet should extend either class Japplet or class Applet.
Archie - An online database of anonymous ftp sites and their contents. It allows to search the ftp repositories using file name queries.
ARJ - One of the most popular compression formats.
ARPA - (Advanced Research Projects Agency) US governmental organization responsible for creating the ancestor of today’s Internet.
ARPAnet - Network created by ARPA in 1969. The precursor to the Internet. Landmark packet-switching network established in 1969 by the US Department of Defense as an experiment in wide-area-networking that would survive a nuclear war.
ASCII – (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). A standard for coding text files. Every character has an associated number and any text can be represented by a sequence of numbers.
ASP - A proprietary Microsoft NT scripting language which may be used to enable web pages to interact with online databases. ASP files, which provide Web developers with an easier, faster, and more powerful way to build Web applications, are regular HTML pages with embedded scripts. These scripts can be written in any language and processed by the server when the file’s URL is requested.
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) - Asynchronous Transfer Mode. International standard for cell relay in which multiple service types (such as voice, video, or data) are conveyed in fixed-length (53-byte) cells. Fixed-length cells allow cell processing to occur in hardware, thereby reducing transit delays. ATM is designed to take advantage of high-speed transmission media such as E3, SONET, and T3.
Audio Streaming - The delivery of audio files from a server to a web browser in a continuous stream of small packets rather than one large file.
AU - Audio file format for Unix systems.
Authentication - The process of identifying an individual, usually based on a username and password.
Auto-responder - Auto-responders allow you to automatically return a pre-set message whenever a selected mailbox receives a message. It will also notify a selected mailbox of the receipt and response.
AVI - Audio/Video Interleave. Audio file format used by Microsoft Windows.
February 29th, 2008
