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Select the first letter of the word from the list above to jump to appropriate section of the glossary. If the term you are looking for starts with a digit or symbol, choose the '#' link.
In theory, you're better off if you have fewer links between your computer and the backbone and if each of those links is a particularly fast one. However, the Internet supports a range of connections rather than a single hierarchical pathway. Individual companies or government organizations often have their own nationwide links with multiple connection points. So the exact performance you'll get with a particular set of links is hard to predict without continuing field experiments.
2.The action of creating a bookmark. Most browsers let you do that simply by pointing and clicking to a bookmark button or menu choice.
Originally, browsers were designed to act only as Web clients (packages that ran on your local computer to show you Web pages supplied by a Web server program running on a network host computer). But most major browser programs have been evolving rapidly, adding such additional functions as reading and creating Internet mail and the ability to display pages that use more complex features, including tables and animations. To further extend their versatility, major browsers also support plug-ins (accessory software module) and helper programs to handle additional data formats.
For a combination of historical and marketing reasons, most firms that produce browsers either give their programs away for free or allow generous "evaluation" periods--and hope to make up the difference on other products, such as the server systems that provide the information over the Web.
2.More generally, a program that allows viewing and navigating within a specific type or format of data but does not allow changes by users. With some types of files, browsers may also compile an overview or summary, allowing the user to zoom in for a more detailed view. You might, for example, have a spreadsheet browser or a database browser.
A number of firms are now developing cable modems that could be used by Internet Service Providers to offer high-speed service to individual users at speeds up to several megabits per second.
It remains to be seen whether cable firms will find it feasible to make the needed additions to their end of the system and whether the whole system will prove a more attractive proposition than forthcoming high-speed technologies based on telephone wiring.
2. for a browser program, a temporary disk file used to hold pages that have been downloaded from the Net in case you want to see them again without waiting to retrieve them once more. A larger cache can speed up surfing, but it may mean you're sometimes looking at information that's out of date.
On the Internet, most applications use a distributed client-server model, with a host computer on the net acting as the server and your desktop computer acting as the client. For example, when you browse the World Wide Web, the pages are furnished by a server and your Web browser program is the client.
Historically, the rightmost part indicated the type of account for U.S. addresses--".com" for commercial, ".gov" for government and so on--or the country for non-U.S. accounts, but that system seems to be breaking down.
To prevent name clashes, parts of the Internet have authorized Network Information Centers (NICs) to assign domain names. In the United States, for example, you can register your own non-military domain name with the InterNIC. Currently, registering a new domain name requires a payment for two years of use, plus arrangements with two or more Internet computers that will answer to your name and supply the corresponding network address.
E-mail is only one form of computer messaging--the Internet and many networks also support "chat" systems, in which both users must be online, and newsgroups and bulletin boards, in which the message is meant for public display.
Most FTP transfers require you log in to the system supplying the information by using an authorized username and password, but a variation known as "anonymous FTP" lets you log in as "anonymous." But these days, most systems require you to use your e-mail address as the password, making it somewhat less than anonymous.
As with the World Wide Web, the search of the documents on any gopher server can act as a starting point for links to other gopher servers, and from there to other servers down the chain. Or, using special catalog servers that index document names and file directory headings ("Archie" and "Veronica"), you can search for documents in a master catalog of all known documents in "gopherspace." Once found, suitable documents can be viewed on screen and all documents can be downloaded.
The name is a pun referring both to the mascot at the University of Minnesota where the program was developed and the program's function as an electronic "gofer" (go for).
While a series of official HTML standards exist, in practice what you get on the Web is defined as much by the statements as by added "extensions" to the language that powerful companies, such as Netscape and Microsoft, support in their browsers. But at least in theory, while all browsers may not support all the HTML code they encounter, they are supposed to ignore the unknown elements and continue on with what they do recognize.
Most portions of the Internet offer some combination of e-mail; access to the World Wide Web; remote login to any accounts you might have on other parts of the Internet, such as Telnet; and document retrieval, including gopher and FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Traditionally, financial charges at the system-to-system level have been based on the speed of the connection to the Net ("the size of the pipe"), rather than the amount of data exchanged or the distance involved. Individual users at companies and universities usually get their accounts without charge, while users connecting through dial-up Internet Service Providers and online services pay by the hour or month, sometimes paying an extra fee for extensive Web traffic or extra storage space.
The current form of the Internet grew out of a project created by the U.S. military to link scientific laboratories and defense installations in a network that would survive an atomic war. Along the way, the Net's development was shaped by the Unix-to-Unix copy system for forwarding electronic mail that became popular in universities in the 1960s. The next stage added links to general users at universities and at the research departments of commercial enterprises. Finally, in the early 1990s, the Internet was opened up to full commercial traffic and open public access through Internet Service Providers.
2. To form such a connection during the creation of a Web page, either by directly specifying it in "HTML" or by using a "linking tool" in a Web-page authoring program.
3. The connection between two computers or between your computer and the rest of the network. Depending on the circumstances, the link can be a "dialup" connection over the telephone, a local area network (LAN) or a direct leased line between computers, or even a radio connection. When the link is "up" you're connected. When it's "down" the connection has been broken.
The overall Usenet collection of newsgroups largely follows a hierarchical structure by subject. Group names start with the most general topic, then add a period, and then add the next level division and period until they get to the individual topic area. For example, inside the "sci" (science) domain you'll find "sci.energy," the more detailed "sci.energy.renewable," and the still more detailed "sci.energy.renewable.solar."
Newsgroups cover subjects ranging from such serious academic disciplines as computer theory to various esoteric personal obsessions. Some newsgroups are intended for a local geographical area only, while others are distributed by Internet Service Providers or Internet sites around the world. It's up to each site that runs a "news server" to decide which groups to carry.
2. In regard to a hypermedia system, such as the World Wide Web, the start or end point of a link.
Except for the OSI-compliant X.400 and X.500 e-mail and directory standards, which are widely used, what was once thought to become the universal communications standard now serves as the teaching model for all other protocols. Most of the functionality in the OSI model exists in all communications systems, although two or three OSI layers may be incorporated into one.
2. To translate a program written for one machine or system to another machine or system.
3. The program produced by such a translation process. In most cases, it will be larger and run more slowly than a "native program" written especially for the target machine.
4. A connector provided on a computer for passing data and control signals to and from a peripheral device. Most desktop computers, for example, include a serial port where you can plug in an external modem.
5. The logical address that a computer uses to communicate with a peripheral device. On most older PCs, you need to know the address assigned to each port to set up many types of software and to add certain items of hardware.
Level 0: Provides data striping (spreading out blocks of each file across multiple disks) but no redundancy. This improves performance but does not deliver fault tolerance.
Level 3: Same as Level 3, but also reserves one dedicated disk for error correction data. It provides good performance and some level of fault tolerance.
Level 5: Provides data striping at the byte level and also stripe error correction information. This results in excellent performance and good fault tolerance.
1. Bus Topology: All devices are connected to a central cable, called the bus or backbone. Bus networks are relatively inexpensive and easy to install. Ethernet systems use a bus topology.
2. Ring Topology: All devices are connected to one another in the shape of a closed loop, so that each device is connected directly to two other devices, one on either side of it. Ring topologies are relatively expensive and difficult to install, but they are robust (one failed device does not usually make the entire network fail).
3. Star Topology: All devices are connected to a central hub. Star networks are relatively easy to install and manage, but bottlenecks can occur because all data must pass through the hub.
2. The size of that flow, usually measured either as an average or peak data rate or as the amount of data moved over a specified time. For example, "The traffic on our Net server has hit 200 megabytes per hour."
A URL starts with the access method the system should use to retrieve the information, such as "http:" for Web-style hypertext, "FTP:" for File Transfer Protocol, and so on. That's followed by a separator ("//"), then the address of the server that supplies the document (www.netguide.com), the path to the document in the server's file system including the name of the document and any file extension (/reference/glossary/URL.htm), and then finally an optional port address (:800).