Basic Internet Glossary Terms

This Glossary is intended only to define some basic terms new Netizens are likely to encounter. There are other Dictionaries and Glossaries on the Web.
Suggestions for additional links are welcome.

Anonymous FTP
Most public FTP servers allow anyone to log into the system as user anonymous. By convention, the user's email address is used as the password.

BROWSER
A Browser (also referred as Web client) is a software application which lets you access and browse any Web Server on the Internet. The Browser will also display in a consistent format any Web document, which can contain text, graphics, sound, or video. The format the Browser uses to display the Web document is called
hypermedia

CLIENT
User-end software or computer designed to access and interact with a server.

CGI
Common Gateway Interface. A computer program or script residing on a web server, following the standards of HTTP, that serves as an interface between the server and the web browser.

DAEMON
Server software that is running in the background on a computer and is ready to accept incoming connections.

DEFAULT GATEWAY
The router assigned by the terminal server.

DIAL-UP CONNECTION
A dial up connection in your computer provides the means to connect with the ASANet Worldwide network, which in turn provides you the Internet access. A dial up connection will give you the opportunity to surf the Internet, receive and send e-mail, participate in Chat Rooms, host your Web page, or download documents
or other pertinent information.

DNS
Domain Name Service. A DNS database cross-references a domain name, such as znet.com, and its associated hosts, with their IP addresses. A host's IP address, not necessarily the host and domain name, is needed to connect to a remote server.

DOMAIN
The name for a network of computers. For example,asanet.com is the domain name for any number of machines, or hosts, within asanet network. Any machine attached to that network, including all users' machines with a dialup connection, are hosts within the asanet.com domain. Furthermore, asanet.com is within the .com domain.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol. An established protocol to allow files to be transferred from one system to another.

GATEWAY
See router.

GOPHER
A hierarchical, text-based information retrieval system, utilizing nested menus linked to additional menus and to documents.

HTML
Hyper Text Markup Language. A suite of tags and a specialized syntax used for formatting a document and creating links to other documents for use on a HTTP server. HTML files usually have the extension .htm or .html. This document, for instance, was created using HTML.

HTTP
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. The basic protocol for the World Wide Web allowing for systems, documents and files to be linked together via URLs and other instructions given in an HTML document.

HOST
The specific name of a machine residing within a domain. For example, www is the name of a machine inside the asanet.com domain, its fully qualified host name being www.asanett.com. Please note that www does not necessarily specify a protocol. By convention, web servers are given the name www but any legal
domain name will do. Furthermore, a server running web services may be running any number of other daemons, such as FTP and SMTP.

IMAP
Internet Message Access Protocol. Allows an email client to
access and manipulate a remote email file without downloading it to
the local system.

IP
Internet Protocol. See TCP/IP.

IP Address
A numerical address specified in four parts, separated by dots (periods) and each part having a number in the range of 0 to 255, the same range as for a byte. Each IP address, then, is four bytes long.
Every machine on the Internet must have an IP address. An example is sj.znet.com's IP address of 207.167.80.19. A machine, however, does not have to have a host or domain name.

ISP
Internet Service Provider. A company providing complete Internet access to the public, most often through modem connections. Virtually every Internet protocol and service is available in an open environment. This differs from Commercial Online Services, such as America Online, Compuserve and Prodigy, in that those services provide access to a closed network of computers running its own proprietary software. However, those companies are now providing some Internet access, although content is sometimes restricted.

InterNIC
Internet Network Information Center. Among other things, the InterNIC is the central registry of all U.S. domain names, Domain Name Servers and IP addresses. A domain name lookup for a domain, such as asanet.com, will return the names and addresses of the Domain Name Servers handling name services for the hosts in
that domain.

INTERNET
A vast network of networks, subnets and computers using the TCP/IP suite of protocols. Internet is not a generic name for all internets (interconnected networks), as others may be based on other protocols. The word Internet, when referring to the world-wide TCP/IP-based network, is a proper noun and should be capitalized.

NIC
Network Interface Card..

NNTP
Network News Transport Protocol. Allows for a news client or another news server to interact with a news server, usually on port 119.

NAME SERVER
See DNS.

NETNEWS
See USENET.

NEWSFEED
The stream of USENET news articles flowing into a news server from another news server. Newsfeeds are made by agreement between the administrators of news servers. Servers, such as news.asanet.com, may have arrangements for multiple newsfeeds, as most servers do not carry all available USENET news groups. If
one newsfeed goes down, some news groups will often continue to be received from a feed not affected by the particular outage.

POP
Post Office Protocol. A suite of commands, usually sent to port 110 (POP3) of a server allowing for the transfer of email from the server to the client (user's email software). These commands are issued by the email client, the whole process being transparent to the user.

PPP
Point to Point Protocol. The protocol used to allow two modems to transmit Internet traffic over phone lines. Considered to be more modern and efficient than SLIP.

ROUTER
A computer dedicated to the task of routing TCP/IP packets through the Internet. Simply told, routers act together as a relay system, each pointing to one or more routers upstream and downstream.