Visual Stream Education Page

COMPUTER & INTERNET VOCABULARY

Active Server Pages (ASP):
Active Server Pages. ASP is Microsoft's server-side scripting technology. An Active Server Page has an .asp extension and it mixes HTML and scripting code that can be written in VBScript or JScript. ASP is distributed with Microsoft's IIS web server, so most host using IIS will also offer ASP for dynamic web programming. ASP.NET is the next version of ASP. Other popular server-side scripting languages are Perl, PHP, ColdFusion, TCL, Python, and JSP.

Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Net, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or in higher units like Mbps (millions of bits per second). 28.8 modem can deliver 28,800 bps, a T1 line is about 1.5 Mbps.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
A style-sheet determines how the HTML document is displayed by the browser. The current version of CSS is version 2 (CSS2).

CGI
Common Gateway Interface. A standard for interfacing web servers with an executable application. A CGI program can be written in any language like Perl or C/C++ and it is often stored in a special directory like /cgi-bin. CGI is often used to process data from HTML forms.

ColdFusion
ColdFusion is an easy to use server-side scripting language developed by Allaire. It comes with ColdFusion Studio, a visual IDE. Other popular server-side scripting languages are ASP. Perl, PHP, TCL, Python, and JSP.

Crawler
Also known as spider, an automated software that retrieves webpages and follows the hyperlinks contained in them. Used to generate indexes used by search engines.

Data transfer
In Web hosting, the total size of files transferred by an account in a month. Sites with a lots of graphics, downloads, or streaming audio or video and a lot of visitors will require plans with more available transfer.

Database
Data in a structured format stored on a web server. Most popular type is a relational database. The most common query (information retrieval) language for relational databases is SQL. Linux-based hosts most commonly include MySQL database and Windows NT-based hosts usually include Access or MS SQL databases.

Dial up
Dialup access is a way of connecting a computer to the Internet using a modem and the telephone line. It is rather slow and blocks the telephone line.

Domain name
Domain name is an easy-to-remember address that can be translated by DNS into server's IP address. Domain names are hierarchical. Domain's suffix indicates which TLD (top level domain) it belongs to, for example .com, .gov, .org, .net, or .jp. Recently ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) added several new TLDs, like .biz, .pro., and .museum.

Electronic Mail (E-Mail, email)
One of the most popular Internet services. Basically it's the transmission of text based messages. An email message can also contain more structured elements, like tables, images and multimedia. It can also be used to send various data files, by means of attachments. You have to have an email account in order to be able to use this service.

Filtering
Screening network packets for certain properties, such as the source or destination address, protocol used or even a pattern in the data. It is used in firewalls in order to decide if the traffic is to be forwarded or rejected. Provides the basis for network security.

Firewall
Firewall refers to either software-only or separate software and hardware combination that serves to protect an internal network or a computer from attacks and unauthorized access by sitting between the Internet and the internal network.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol. The Internet protocol defining how to download and upload files between a client and an FTP server. Popular client FTP programs are CuteFTP and WS_FTP. Major browser also have FTP capability.

HTML
(Hypertext Markup Language). It is the language in which web pages are written. It allows the images to be combined with text and offers wide range of formatting capabilities. One of the most important features of HTML is hypertext, that allows web pages to be liked one to each other.

Hyperlink
A part of the web page that links to another web page. By clicking on a hyperlink user redirects the browser to another page. The word hyperlink is sometimes shortened to just "link".

IP Address
Internet Protocol Address. A unique number identifying all devices connected to the Internet. This number is usually shown in groups of numbers from 0 to 255, separated by periods, for example 207.43.270.265.

IRC
Internet Relay Chat. Multi-user chat service. IRC users can go into public or private channels to discuss a topic or transfer files. IRC servers are connected into networks. The most popular IRC client program is mIRC. Many hosts are vary of letting customers access IRC because of a possibility of a denial of service attack on the whole network.

ISDN
(Integrated Services Digital Network). An international standard that governs the transmission of both voice and data. It uses a digital circuits and has speed of 64Kbps. It can be used for normal telephone service as well as data transmission.

ISP
Internet Service Provider. A company that provides its subscribers with Internet access. Customers have a username and a password and can dial-up or use a cable or DSL line to connect to ISP's network which is connected to the Internet. The biggest ISP is AOL.

JavaScript
Simple, client-side programming language created by Sun and Netscape. JavaScript can be embedded in HTML pages to create interactive effects and do tasks like validate form data. JavaScript is a separate language from Java. All popular modern browsers support JavaScript. A few hosts support server-side JavaScript.

LAN
Local Area Network. A network of devices (computers, printers, hubs) occupying a small area. Usually LANs do not span more than one building. LANs are very fast compared to WANs.

Login
An alias for an individual that is used for identification and authentication when accessing a computer system. Usually it is a sequence of characters and digits.

Mailserver
The Internet host (together with the appropriate software) that is used to send, receive and forward email messages.

Mirror site
An FTP site that stores the exact content of some other site. Mirroring is done in order to minimize the load on a particular server and also to increase reliability.

Modem
MOdulator-DEModulator. A device used to transform digital data sent by a computer to analog format suitable for transmission over a telephone line. It also transforms analog signals back to the digital form. A modem is required for the dial up connection to the Internet.

ODBC
(Open Database Connectivity) A standard allowing applications to access different databases in an uniform way.

Operating system
A software heart of the computer. It is a set of programs that manage the hardware resources of a computer, provide the environment for application programs to run and provide the user interface. Most known operating systems are: different flavors of Unix (SunOs, HP-UX, Irix, FreeBSD, Linux,...), MacOS and Windows.

Plug-in
An add-on piece of software that can extend the features of an existing application. For example Netscape browser plug-ins allow displaying of new types of web content, that the browser can't display on its own.

Protocol
A set of rules by following which two parties can communicate. The TCP/IP protocol suite is the basis of todays Internet.

Router
A network device (can be a dedicated computer) that is used to connect two or more networks together and route packets between them.

S/MIME
Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions - a way of making email messages more secure. S/MIME uses digital certificates to attest the message origin and encryption to ensure that message could not be read while in transit.

Scripting Language
A programming language in which programs are the series of commands that are interpreted and then executed one by one. Doesn't require the compilation phase, for the price of lower performance.

Search engine
An Internet service that stores a vast number of web pages and allows for fast searching among them. Also, a piece of software that implements a website search functionality.

Service Provider
A company that provides access to the Internet, usually for a fee.

SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Very popular protocol used to transfer email messages across the Internet mail servers.

Spam
Unsolicited email sent in mass quantities to multiple receipents, most often for marketing purposes. Highly annoying and constituting one of the most serious netiquette violations.

Spider
An automated software that retrieves webpages and follows the hyperlinks contained in them. Used to generate indexes used by search engines.

SQL
Structured Query Language. Limited programming language used for updating and performing queries on relational databases. All databases share a common subset of SQL. Most popular SQL databases available with hosting plans are MySQL and MS SQL

Streaming
Playing multimedia files (audio and video) without requiring a full download. Audio and video are compressed but they still may require a lot of bandwidth. Most popular streaming media formats are Real Audio/Video.

TCP
(Transmission Control Protocol) is the most important of the network protocols used in the Internet.

TCP/IP
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). This protocol suite is the de facto standard for the today's Internet. TCP is a higher level protocol that runs on top of the IP protocol.

Unix
A family of multi-user operating systems, first developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories in the 1970s and then licensed to many universities. A basis for Linux, a very popular operating system among web hosts.

URL
(Uniform Resource Locator) is a way of addressing used for world wide web. An URL consist of the type of service (protocol), then the host name and then the file on the host.

VBScript
Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition. Interpreted scripting language (subset of MS Visual Basic language) for creating scripts that can be embedded in HTML pages or for creating ActiveX Controls. Meant as an alternative to JavaScript. Here is the official VBScript site. VBScript is comparable to JScript.

Virus
A virus is a malicious program written to do as much harm as possible. Viruses can spread themselves over the network.

WAV
An audio file format. Very accurate, but offers no compression, thus resulting in very large files.

Webmaster
A person responsible for the maintenance of a particular website.

Whois
An Internet service allowing to obtain the information about the domain name owner.

Wide Area Network (WAN)
A set of computers that are to far apart to constitute a LAN. In fact, WANs are very often composed of a number of Local Area Networks interconnected together.

WWW
World Wide Web (or Web) is the most popular Internet service. It allows access to the information and services from the web servers. A web browser is needed to use the Web.

XML
Extensible Markup Language. A meta-language, abbreviated version of SGML, used to specify other document types used on the Web. Accepted as a format in 1998 to replace dependence on HTML extensions. MSIE 5.5 and Netscape 6 both support XML.

ZIP
A popular compression utility.



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COMPUTER & INTERNET VOCABULARY Active Server Pages (ASP): Active Server Pages. ASP is Microsoft's server-side scripting technology. An Active Server Page has an .asp extension and it mixes HTML and scripting code that can be written in VBScript or JScript. ASP is distributed with Microsoft's IIS web server, so most host using IIS will also offer ASP for dynamic web programming. ASP.NET is the next version of ASP. Other popular server-side scripting languages are Perl, PHP, ColdFusion, TCL, Python, and JSP. Bandwidth Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Net, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or in higher units like Mbps (millions of bits per second). 28.8 modem can deliver 28,800 bps, a T1 line is about 1.5 Mbps. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) A style-sheet determines how the HTML document is displayed by the browser. The current version of CSS is version 2 (CSS2). CGI Common Gateway Interface. A standard for interfacing web servers with an executable application. A CGI program can be written in any language like Perl or C/C++ and it is often stored in a special directory like /cgi-bin. CGI is often used to process data from HTML forms. ColdFusion ColdFusion is an easy to use server-side scripting language developed by Allaire. It comes with ColdFusion Studio, a visual IDE. Other popular server-side scripting languages are ASP. Perl, PHP, TCL, Python, and JSP. Crawler Also known as spider, an automated software that retrieves webpages and follows the hyperlinks contained in them. Used to generate indexes used by search engines. Data transfer In Web hosting, the total size of files transferred by an account in a month. Sites with a lots of graphics, downloads, or streaming audio or video and a lot of visitors will require plans with more available transfer. Database Data in a structured format stored on a web server. Most popular type is a relational database. The most common query (information retrieval) language for relational databases is SQL. Linux-based hosts most commonly include MySQL database and Windows NT-based hosts usually include Access or MS SQL databases. Dial up Dialup access is a way of connecting a computer to the Internet using a modem and the telephone line. It is rather slow and blocks the telephone line. Domain name Domain name is an easy-to-remember address that can be translated by DNS into server's IP address. Domain names are hierarchical. Domain's suffix indicates which TLD (top level domain) it belongs to, for example .com, .gov, .org, .net, or .jp. Recently ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) added several new TLDs, like .biz, .pro., and .museum. Electronic Mail (E-Mail, email) One of the most popular Internet services. Basically it's the transmission of text based messages. An email message can also contain more structured elements, like tables, images and multimedia. It can also be used to send various data files, by means of attachments. You have to have an email account in order to be able to use this service. Filtering Screening network packets for certain properties, such as the source or destination address, protocol used or even a pattern in the data. It is used in firewalls in order to decide if the traffic is to be forwarded or rejected. Provides the basis for network security. Firewall Firewall refers to either software-only or separate software and hardware combination that serves to protect an internal network or a computer from attacks and unauthorized access by sitting between the Internet and the internal network. FTP File Transfer Protocol. The Internet protocol defining how to download and upload files between a client and an FTP server. Popular client FTP programs are CuteFTP and WS_FTP. Major browser also have FTP capability. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). It is the language in which web pages are written. It allows the images to be combined with text and offers wide range of formatting capabilities. One of the most important features of HTML is hypertext, that allows web pages to be liked one to each other. Hyperlink A part of the web page that links to another web page. By clicking on a hyperlink user redirects the browser to another page. The word hyperlink is sometimes shortened to just "link". IP Address Internet Protocol Address. A unique number identifying all devices connected to the Internet. This number is usually shown in groups of numbers from 0 to 255, separated by periods, for example 207.43.270.265. IRC Internet Relay Chat. Multi-user chat service. IRC users can go into public or private channels to discuss a topic or transfer files. IRC servers are connected into networks. The most popular IRC client program is mIRC. Many hosts are vary of letting customers access IRC because of a possibility of a denial of service attack on the whole network. ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network). An international standard that governs the transmission of both voice and data. It uses a digital circuits and has speed of 64Kbps. It can be used for normal telephone service as well as data transmission. ISP Internet Service Provider. A company that provides its subscribers with Internet access. Customers have a username and a password and can dial-up or use a cable or DSL line to connect to ISP's network which is connected to the Internet. The biggest ISP is AOL. JavaScript Simple, client-side programming language created by Sun and Netscape. JavaScript can be embedded in HTML pages to create interactive effects and do tasks like validate form data. JavaScript is a separate language from Java. All popular modern browsers support JavaScript. A few hosts support server-side JavaScript. LAN Local Area Network. A network of devices (computers, printers, hubs) occupying a small area. Usually LANs do not span more than one building. LANs are very fast compared to WANs. Login An alias for an individual that is used for identification and authentication when accessing a computer system. Usually it is a sequence of characters and digits. Mailserver The Internet host (together with the appropriate software) that is used to send, receive and forward email messages. Mirror site An FTP site that stores the exact content of some other site. Mirroring is done in order to minimize the load on a particular server and also to increase reliability. Modem MOdulator-DEModulator. A device used to transform digital data sent by a computer to analog format suitable for transmission over a telephone line. It also transforms analog signals back to the digital form. A modem is required for the dial up connection to the Internet. ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) A standard allowing applications to access different databases in an uniform way. Operating system A software heart of the computer. It is a set of programs that manage the hardware resources of a computer, provide the environment for application programs to run and provide the user interface. Most known operating systems are: different flavors of Unix (SunOs, HP-UX, Irix, FreeBSD, Linux,...), MacOS and Windows. Plug-in An add-on piece of software that can extend the features of an existing application. For example Netscape browser plug-ins allow displaying of new types of web content, that the browser can't display on its own. Protocol A set of rules by following which two parties can communicate. The TCP/IP protocol suite is the basis of todays Internet. Router A network device (can be a dedicated computer) that is used to connect two or more networks together and route packets between them. S/MIME Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions - a way of making email messages more secure. S/MIME uses digital certificates to attest the message origin and encryption to ensure that message could not be read while in transit. Scripting Language A programming language in which programs are the series of commands that are interpreted and then executed one by one. Doesn't require the compilation phase, for the price of lower performance. Search engine An Internet service that stores a vast number of web pages and allows for fast searching among them. Also, a piece of software that implements a website search functionality. Service Provider A company that provides access to the Internet, usually for a fee. SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Very popular protocol used to transfer email messages across the Internet mail servers. Spam Unsolicited email sent in mass quantities to multiple receipents, most often for marketing purposes. Highly annoying and constituting one of the most serious netiquette violations. Spider An automated software that retrieves webpages and follows the hyperlinks contained in them. Used to generate indexes used by search engines. SQL Structured Query Language. Limited programming language used for updating and performing queries on relational databases. All databases share a common subset of SQL. Most popular SQL databases available with hosting plans are MySQL and MS SQL Streaming Playing multimedia files (audio and video) without requiring a full download. Audio and video are compressed but they still may require a lot of bandwidth. Most popular streaming media formats are Real Audio/Video. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is the most important of the network protocols used in the Internet. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). This protocol suite is the de facto standard for the today's Internet. TCP is a higher level protocol that runs on top of the IP protocol. Unix A family of multi-user operating systems, first developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories in the 1970s and then licensed to many universities. A basis for Linux, a very popular operating system among web hosts. URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a way of addressing used for world wide web. An URL consist of the type of service (protocol), then the host name and then the file on the host. VBScript Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition. Interpreted scripting language (subset of MS Visual Basic language) for creating scripts that can be embedded in HTML pages or for creating ActiveX Controls. Meant as an alternative to JavaScript. Here is the official VBScript site. VBScript is comparable to JScript. Virus A virus is a malicious program written to do as much harm as possible. Viruses can spread themselves over the network. WAV An audio file format. Very accurate, but offers no compression, thus resulting in very large files. Webmaster A person responsible for the maintenance of a particular website. Whois An Internet service allowing to obtain the information about the domain name owner. Wide Area Network (WAN) A set of computers that are to far apart to constitute a LAN. In fact, WANs are very often composed of a number of Local Area Networks interconnected together. WWW World Wide Web (or Web) is the most popular Internet service. It allows access to the information and services from the web servers. A web browser is needed to use the Web. XML Extensible Markup Language. A meta-language, abbreviated version of SGML, used to specify other document types used on the Web. Accepted as a format in 1998 to replace dependence on HTML extensions. MSIE 5.5 and Netscape 6 both support XML. ZIP A popular compression utility.
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