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Glossary Of Terms

Acceptable use policy
A set of rules that governs how a network may be used.

Access counter
A small program inserted in a web page that tracks the page's hit count. (how many times it's been accessed)

Access number
The telephone number used to dail into an Internet Service Provider.

Access Provider
See service provider.GOOD SERVICE ALBEDO.NET

Access time
The time that elapses from the instant information is requested to the point that delivery is completed.

Accumulator
A register (temporary storage) in which the result of an operation is formed.

ACK
Acknowledge. When one computer sends out a signal, usually a block of data to another computer over a network, the second computer sends back an acknowledgment. If second computer detected any errors it would send them back a negative acknowledgment.

Acronyms
Short form for a group of words. See Sol: chat-o-rama: Acronyms 'R' Us

Active window
The window in which the user is currently working

Active X
A microsoft software program.

Address
Refers to where a particular piece of data or other information is found in the computer.

Addresses
Most used addresses on the net e-mail address, IP address, and URL.

Adobe Acrobat
A technology developed by Adobe systems that allows documents created on one computer system to be read and printed on other systems with the fonts, formatting, text attributes, and graphic elements intact. The Adobe Acrobat software family is used to read, view, and print files in Portable Document Format (PDF). The Acrobat Reader reads PFD files, Acrobat Exchange reads and creates PDF files, and Acrobat Distiller converts PoatScript files to PDF files. Adobe Acrobat Reader

ADSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. A digital line that uses the existing twisted pair copper telephone network to achieve speeds of up to 6 mbps up to 3.8 km, or 1.5 mbps up to 5.6 km.

Agent
A software process empowered to transparently act for or represent a user by completing transactions. Such as www.firefly.com.

.aiff
a sound file format. Macintosh See also .au, .aif, .wav, and .mp2.

AIX
A multiple user OS, basically IBM's attempt to copy UNIX.

Alta Vista
Search engine. See www.altavista.digital.com.

Analog loopback
A modem self-test in which data from the keyboard is sent to the modem's transmitter, modulated into analog form, looped back to the receiver, demodulated into digital form, and returned to the screen for verification.

Anchor
A word or phrase in a web page that's used as a target for a link. When the user selects the link, the browser jumps to the anchor, which may exist in the same document or in a different document.
2)
A hypertext link in the form of text or a graphic that, when clicked upon, takes you to the linked file.

Annie
A Web page that look like it has been abandoned, most of the links are out of date. It's been orphaned.

Anonymous FTP
An FTP session where you log in using "anonymous" as your user id, and you enter your e-mail address as the password.

ANSI character set
The American National Standard Institute 8- bit character set. It contains 256 characters.

API
See Application Program Interface.

Applet
A Java program. A small Java program that can be embedded in an HTML page. Applets differ from full-fledged Java applications in that they are not allowed to access certain resources on the local computer, such as files and serial devices (modems, printers, etc.), and are prohibited from communicating with most other computers across a network. The current rule is that an applet can only make an Internet connection to the computer from which the applet was sent. The Cafe del Sol.

Application
A computer program used for a particular kind of work. Such as word processing or database management. This term is used interchangeably with "program."

Application Program Interface (API)
A document for programmers that provides the technical specifications for interfacing with an application from another program.

Arachnerd
A person that spends way too much time either surfing the web or fussing with their home page.

Archie
An Internet service that searches a database of FTP sites for a file.Archie Request Form.

Archive site
A server that provides access to an organized collection of files.

ARPAnet
Advanced Research Projects Agency. The experimental network, established in the 1970s, where the theories and software on which the Internet is based were tested. See Information

Artifiacial intelligence
A branch of science that studies how to endow computers with human intelligence.

ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. The standard method for encoding characters as 8-bit sequences of binary numbers, allowing a maximum of 256 characters. Text files are customarily called "ASCII files"..
2)
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Universal 7- bit character set that can represent 128 characters. It's the Universal text format that can displayed on any computer on the Internet. Some of these characters are special characters, called control characters, that are used for communications control.ASCII-ISO 8859-1 (latin-1) Table with HTML Entity Names.

Associate
To identify a filename extension as "belonging" to a certain application. When you open a file with an extension that has been associated with an application, the application starts automatically.

Asymmetrical
Providing differing bandwidth in different directions. 56k modems are asymmetrical: they offer a maximum speed of 56k for downloading, but only 28.8k or 33.6k for uploading.

Asymmetrical modulation
A duplex transmission technique that splits the communications channel into one high-speed channel and one slower channel. During a call under asymmetrical modulation, the modem with the greast amount of data to transmit is allocated the high-speed channel. The modem with less data is allocated the slow, or back, channel (450 bps). The modems dynamically reverse the channels during a call if the volume of data transfer changes.

Asynchronous communication
Data transmission in which the length of time between transmitted characters may vary. Timing is dependent on the actual time for the transfer to take place, as opposed to synchronous communication, which is timed by an external clock signal. Because the receiving modem must be signaled about when the data bits of a character begin and end, start and stop bits are added to each character.

ATM
Asycronous Transfer Mode. Not to be confused with banking machines. Ultra high speed line for use with speeds up to 400,000,000 baud.
2)
Asynchronous Transfer Mode. ATM is a high bandwidth, low-delay, packet-like switching and multiplexing technique. Usable capacity is segmented into fixed-sized cells, consisting of header and information fields, allocated to services on demand. ATM will be the basis for the future broadband network in view of its flexibility and suitability for both transmission and switching.

Attached file
A file that is attached to e-mail.

Attribute
Property that further defines an HTML tag. For example, in the paragraph tag < p align="center"> , align="center" is an attribute that specifies a centered paragraph.
2)
Information about a file that indicates whether the file is read-only, hidden, or system, and whether it has been changed since it was last backed up.

Attribute byte
A byte of information, held in the directory entry of any file, that discribes various attributes of the file, such as whether it is read-only or has been backed up since it last was changed.

.au
a sound file format. Sun Microsystems. See also .aiff, .aif, .wav, and .mp2.

AUP
See Acceptable Use Policy.

Authentication
A security feature that allows access to information to be granted on an individual basis.

Auto answer
A setting in modems enabling them to answer incoming calls over the phone lines automatically.

Auto dial
A feature in modems enabling them to dial phone numbers without human intervention.

AVI
Audio/Visual Interleave Format. Microsoft's compressed audio/video file format.

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