Net Tutor:
Terminology
Bookmarks | Browser | Cache | Cookies | DNS | Domain
Email | FTP | HTML | Hypertext | Internet | IP | IP
Address
ISDN | ISP | MIME | Spam | Surfing the Net | T1/T3 | TCP/IP
Telnet | URL | WWW
Bookmarks
Bookmarks are shortcuts used to mark locations on the Internet, much
like a bookmark in a printed book, only this definition refers to World Wide Web addresses, or URLs.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer uses a the term Favorites rather than Bookmarks. These
shortcuts are used to record a site you want to return to in a menu, so you do not have to
retype the address (http://www.talweb.com/nettutor/vocabulary.html). TalWeb has created
many Favorites pages featuring some of the most popular Internet sites for our customers,
but you may wish to make your own set of favorites (or bookmarks) for yourself.
Browser
"Browser" is the generic term for any piece of software that
lets you see Internet Web pages. You may use the Microsoft Internet Explorer (TalWeb's
preferred browser) or the Netscape Navigator. The very first Web browsers, such as Lynx,
only allowed users to see the text of Web pages. The Mosaic browser was the first to
introduce graphics to the mix.
Cache
Say "cash." Have you noticed that once you've visited a
particular Web page, if you click to it again it usually appears onscreen faster? That's
your cache at work. A cache is an area of your computer's memory or its hard drive that
stores Web text and images you've already seen. When your browser asks to see those things
again, the computer has them on hand and doesn't have to go get it from the Net. For
instance, the TalWeb logo has been cached since you loaded this page. As you moved around
in here and ran across the logo again and again, the computer showed you the logo it had
saved, rather than coming back and asking our Web computers for it. This is much faster
than downloading the logo every time you view a TalWeb page. This is nice for things that
don't change (like our logo), but not so good when you wish to return to something that
changes a lot, such as a page of sports scores.
Cookies
If you've ever wandered around a Web shopping mall throwing goodies into
a virtual shopping cart, you've been making Web cookies. A cookie is a small piece of
information that a Web server (such as the one that holds the Web shopping mall) sends to
your browser to hold onto until it's time for the server to read it. For instance, the
cookie made while you shop around a Web mall contains a list of the items you're planning
to purchase. When you head to the checkout desk, the server collects the cookie from your
browser to see what you're buying. Cookies also have expiration dates and instructions
about which sites can "eat" them, along with security information to protect
your buying info.
domain
The name of the Internet site you are visiting. There are several
levels....examples .edu(educational), .com (commercial), .gov(government), .net(Network),
.org(organization), .mil(military), also .uk (for United Kingdom,etc)
DNS-Domain Name Server
This is a server address your PC uses to find other web addresses. For
example, the website www.microsoft.com is actually found at IP address 111.11.11.121 and
the DNS is used to handle the conversion to numbers and locate the site.
Email-Electronic Mail
Most Email (or e-mail) is received by TalWeb receipients within 5
minutes of the message being sent
FTP-File Transfer Protocol
You've probably put software on your computer by putting diskettes into
a disk drive. Online, you can get software by downloading it. The software sits on
Computer X; you use your browser or an FTP (file-transfer protocol) program to find and
retrieve the software to your computer. If you had software you wanted to send to another
computer, you'd reverse the process; this is known as "uploading."
HTML-HyperText Markup Language
Imagine the Web with no pictures or links. Not much fun, right? How
'bout a Web without pages? You'd probably agree that it wouldn't be a "web" at
all. But that's what the Internet would be like without HTML. HTML is the language used to
create hypertext, which means it's the foundation of the Web as we know it. In fact, HTML
was used to create every single page you've ever visited on the Web (including this one).
HTML uses a series of commands written in ascii text to tell your browser how to display
each page, whether it means using a different size, or style or to display graphics, and
create links. If you want to see what the HTML code looks like for whatever page you're
on, just use the "View Document Source" command under the "View" menu
in your browser.
hypertext
They say the Web is just one big hypertext document. (Why do
"they" insist on talking gibberish like that?) Every Web page that lets you
click to go to another Web page, and every page that includes a graphic or other fancy
thing, is said to be hypertext. That means that though it appears to you as just one Web
page, it's actually composed of several pieces that can be scattered all across the Web.
Hypertext -- that is, the connections that bring various bits together to make Web pages
-- is what makes the Web Webby.
Internet
An internet can refer to any distributed network of computers, but you
probably want to know about the Internet with a capital "I." Simply put, it's
the largest of the internets. But at its heart, it's just a bunch of computers all over
the world hooked up to one another so they can exchange information. To exchange
information they use protocols such as FTP, Gopher, and Hypertext Transport Protocol or
HTTP (the protocol that transfers World Wide Web information.)
IP
Internet Protocol (or IP) is the packet-switching protocol through which
everything happens on the Internet. More specifically, it's the underlying network beneath
TCP/IP that creates the addressing scheme that allows computers to find each other. The
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a group of experts, vendors, and end-users, helps
to define and refine each successive version of IP; the latest version at the time of this
writing is IPv4.
IP Address
An Internet Protocol address used much like a telephone number. Programs
will access another PC somewhere using the IP address. The number of available Ip
addresses is limited and soon the current structure may have to be changed.
ISDN
Integrated Service Digital Network (or ISDN for short) is the digital
telephone system that has been touted as the replacement for our current slow and noisy
analog phone lines once and for all. ISDN promised to standardize the high-speed (up to
128Kbps) transmission of voice, data, and graphic images. Like plenty of technology,
however, ISDN has turned out to be too good to be true. Digital, yes. Fast? Well, faster
than current phone lines, yes. However, ISDN doesn't hold a candle to the blazing speed of
fiber optic lines. The final nail in ISDN's coffin is that, depending on the phone service
in your area, it may be outrageously expensive or not available at all.
ISP-Internet Service Provider
If you're reading this, you already have an Internet Service Provider,
or ISP. It's the company that provides you access to the Internet. When you use TalWeb, we
are acting as your ISP. Many new users, especially people who have never owned a personal
computer before, try the other services such as America Online and CompuServe. However,
those services charge more for their access and often block some content from their
members.
MIME
No, no need to get violent, we're not talking about the silent,
help-I'm-trapped-in-a-box type of mime here. MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions, and it refers to an extension of traditional text-based Internet e-mail. MIME
allows you to send non-textual data, such as audio clips, graphic images, and even faxes,
as specially encoded attachments with e-mail messages. (See How To Surf for more about
e-mail.)
Spam
The Internet is a fantastic way of communicating, just as "snail
mail" (postal mail) has been in the past. Unfortunately, the newsgroups and e-mail
boxes of the world have already developed their equivalent to junk mail. It's called
"spam," and it's considered poor Internet manners. When you see the same
make-money-fast message in all the newsgroups and in your mailbox, the Net has been
spammed. Since most of these mass-mailing (or mass-posting) messages are irrelevant to the
groups and recipients who get them, spam is considered a serious breach of Net etiquette.
Surfing the Net
When you visit multiple internet sites (or websites) and follow links to
other internet pages or type other addresses to visit multiple sites, this is called
"Surfing the Net." All it means is your are riding the internet much like a
surfer rides a wave.
T1/T3
The big-time phone lines leased by big companies, universities, and the
government for high-speed Net access and large-scale phone service are called T1s or T3s,
depending on the line's capacity. T1 lines, theoretically, carry data at a maximum
1.544Mbps. While that's blazingly fast compared to your modem's 28.8Kbps crawl (1.544 Mbps
is 1,544Kbps), T1s will still drop frames if you're trying out full-screen, full-motion
teleconferencing. T3 lines, on the other hand, are rated at 44Mbps, which will do fine for
that full-screen video, and leave plenty of room for sending and receiving the latest
e-mail gossip.
TCP/IP-Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
As you cruise the Web you'll find pages in English and French and
Swedish and all sorts of human languages, but the computers on the Web speak just one
language. That's TCP/IP. TCP/IP is the basic language (set of rules, if you prefer) by
which all Internet computers talk to each other and send the tiny chunks of information
that make up a Web page (or anything else online). To get onto the Net, your computer
needs to have a little understanding of TCP/IP; that's called its TCP/IP stack. Most AOL
users don't have to worry about this stuff, but for many of the rest of us the
installation and setup of the TCP/IP stack was one of the hardest parts of getting online.
(Give yourself a hand for getting through it!)
telnet
Telnet is a way by which you can log into a computer that you're not
sitting in front of. For instance, say you have an Internet account at yourhome.com, but
you're out of town and yourhome.com is a long-distance call away. If yourhome.com allows
people with accounts to log in via telnet, you could get onto another computer on the Net
and telnet to the yourhome.com computers and log in to check your mail. Some of the chat
areas on the Net are reached via telnet.
URL-Uniform
Resource Locator
Just as every person on the Net has a unique e-mail address, every file
and page on the Web has a unique URL. The URL is the address of a Web page. You can see
the URL for the Web page you're on now; look up above the page to the thin white
horizontal box. The jumble of letters in there is the URL. (It happens to be
"http://www.talweb.com/nettutor/vocabulary.html"). The first part of the URL
(http) tells the browser it's looking for a Web page. The rest gives the name of the
computer that holds the page (www.talweb.com), the directory it's in (nettutor/) and the
name of the file that makes up the page (vocabulary.html). You can instantly jump to any
page on the Web by typing the page's URL into the white box.
WWW-World Wide Web
Also called WWW, W3, or just the Web, the World Wide Web is the whole
gamut of hypertext servers that let HTML programmers present virtual, on-screen pages
combining text, graphics, audio, and other file types -- not to mention links to other
pages. Users point and click to access World Wide Web pages using browser software, such
as Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator. Sometimes WWW is jokingly
referred to as the World Wide Wait because of the slower access times on many websites.
This is due to the fact millions of new people are "Surfing the Net" every month.
© 1999, TalWeb Internet Providers
