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RESOURCES

The Essential Internet Phrase Book

ILEC - Incumbant local-exchange carrier. A company from which a CLEC leases local loops for resale to end users. In plain English, it's whatever local phone company has been around forever. For example, Pacific Bell is an ILEC.

Image Enhancement - Changing a digital image so that it is more pleasing to the eye. Photo software programs allow an image to be sharpened or contrast to be increased or decreased, for example.

Ink Jet Printer - A non-impact printer that uses ink droplets to create information on a page. As the print head moves across a page, it shoots out a stream of tiny, electrostatically charged droplets, placing them precisely to form an image.

InterNIC - Internet Network Information Center. An organization originally funded by the National Science Foundation to provide information, directory assistance, and domain name registration services. Now a privately funded venture.

Internet - The world's largest computer network--actually a global network of computer networks. Although its roots are in government and university research, it has been commercialized. In recent years, extending its use to anyone with a computer, a modem, a telephone line and an Internet service provider.
At its heart, the Internet is many large computer networks joined by high-speed backbone data links. The World Wide Web is part of the Internet; the terms are not interchangeable. See also WWW.

Intranet - A private network that uses Internet software and standards. It is reserved for use by specific people who have been given the authority and passwords necessary to use that network. It's an increasingly popular way for companies to grant their employees easy access to corporate information.

IP Address - A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g. 165.113.245.2 Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP address. A standard for software that keeps track of the addresses for different network connection points, routes outgoing messages and recognizes incoming messages. It allows a packet to traverse multiple networks on the way to its final destination.

IP Telephony - An emerging set of technologies enabling voice, data and video collaboration over existing IP-based LANs and WANs as well as the Internet. The same ubiquitous networks that carry e-mail and data traffic also can be used to connect with individuals, businesses, schools and governments worldwide. It allows organizations and individuals to lower the costs of existing services (e.g. voice and broadcast wide) while broadening their means of communication to include modern videoconferencing and application sharing.
In the past, it was necessary to deploy separate networks--each with different transport requirements--to handle traditional voice, data and video traffic. IP telephony blends the three by specifying a common transport protocol for them, effectively collapsing three networks into one.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) - Basically a huge multi-user live chat facility. There are a number of major IRC servers around the world which are linked to each other. Anyone can create a channel and anything that anyone types in a given channel is seen by all others in the channel. Private channels can (and are) created for multi-person conference calls.

ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) - Basically a way to move data over existing regular phone lines at speeds of roughly 128,000 bits-per-second over regular phone lines which is about 9 times faster than a regular modem.
A set of standards for digital data transmission designed to work over existing copper telephone wires and newer cabling media. ISDN provides an option for those who want faster data transfer than is offered on traditional analog phone lines, but can't afford the higher cost of T1 services. It represents one of the important technologies developed to enable the transition of communications networks from analog to digital.

ISP (Internet Service Provider) - A vendor that provides access for companies and individuals to the Internet and the World Wide Web. Users typically reach their ISPs by dialing up either through their own modems and phone lines, or over dedicated lines installed by the telephone company.

Jaggies - (See Aliasing).

Java - A programming language developed by sun Microsystems Inc., designed primarily for writing software to post on World Wide Web sites for download to any type of computer. It caused initial excitement by bringing motion to static Web pages, making animated figures dance and stock tickers flash. But it has a larger potential.

In the past, software programs were written for particular computers and resided on single machines. But Java theoretically enables a program to reside anywhere on the Web, working equally well on any machine that downloads it--thus rendering Microsoft Windows irrelevant, if not obsolete.
For answers to frequently asked questions, visit http://www.ibiblio.org/javafaq/javafaq.html.

JPEG or JPG - Abbreviation for Joint Photographic Experts Group. A graphics file format that is a standardized method for compressing and decompressing still-image files. It reduces the size of a file to 1/20th of its original size. JPEG is considered a "lossy" compression format, meaning that some digital information is lost whenever a compression or decompression takes place.

LAN (local-area network) - A short-distance data communications network, typically within a building or campus, that's used to link computers and peripheral devices (printers, fax, machines, scanners, modems) under some form of standard control. It allows linked computers to access a variety of shared resources - typically files, application programs and peripheral devices. The computers are connected through wires or wireless signals.

LAWN (local-area wireless network) - A local home, business, community organization, campus, or other phone or data network that uses wireless technology to provide the links. The communication is often carried out over radio frequencies in the PM or infrared range.

Link or Reciprocal Link - an image or text that will transfer the reader to another page in a website or to another website. Reciprocal links refers to the act of one site reciprocating by linking back to the original site. This technique is often used to build up traffic to a site so everyone benefits.

Listserv - The most common kind of automated mailing list on the Internet.

LMDS (Local multipoint distribution system) - A high radio-frequency wireless service (not like cellular) designed for business to use to bypass telephone service for broadcasting data.

Login ID - The account name used to identify a person when they are gaining access to a computer system.

Maillist - A (usually automated) system that allows a person to send e-mail to one address and have that message sent to all of the other subscribers on the mailing list. In this way, people who have many different kinds of e-mail access can participate in discussions together.

Memory caching - A technology for increasing hardware performance by storing frequently used sequences of instructions in a cache separate from the computer's main memory, where they can be more quickly accessed by the central processing unit.

MHz (megahertz) - one MHz equals 1 million cycles per second; usually applied to bandwidth.
The measure also is used by the computer industry to represent clock cycles per second for a processor. Everything that happens in a computer is timed according to a clock that ticks millions of times each second. Higher-MHz computers generally work faster than lower-MHz computers, but other factors also affect speed.

Meta Tags - keywords or key descriptors that categorize a web-page, a website, the information contained on the web pages, the program used to create the page and the author of the page. The meta tags are only visible in the HTML source code.

MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) - a method for attaching non-text files to standard Internet mail messages, including graphics, spreadsheets, formatted word-processor documents, or sound files.

Modem (Modulator, DeModulator) - A device that you connect to your computer and to a phone line, that allows the computer to talk to other computers through the phone system. Basically, modems do for computers what a telephone does for humans.
Most current modems include fax transmission capabilities; some include voice-mail capabilities as well.

Mosaic - The first WWW browser that was available for the Macintosh, Windows, and UNIX all with the same interface. Mosaic really started the popularity of the Web. The source-code to Mosaic has been licensed by several companies.

Netiquette - The etiquette on the Internet.

Netscape Navigator™- A WWW Browser and the name of a company. The Netscape Navigator™ browser was originally based on the Mosaic program developed at the National Center for Super-computing Applications (NCSA). The main author of Mosaic, Mark Andreessen, was hired away from the NCSA by Jim Clark, and they founded a company that became Netscape Communications Corporation.

Newsgroup - The name for discussion groups on the USENET part of the Internet.

NSF - National Science Foundation - The U.S. government agency responsible for operation of the Internet backbone for the United States, which is called NSFNET.

Packet - A generic term for a bundle of data, usually in binary form, organized in a specific way according to a protocol for transmission.

Packet Switching - data coming from a machine is broken up into chunks or packets, each chunk has the address of where it came from and where it is going. This enables chunks of data from many different sources to co-mingle on the same lines, and be sorted and directed to different routes by special machines along the way.

Page View - Like an ad view but for an individual Web page. A page view occurs each time a Web page is requested from a server.

Password - A code used to gain access to a locked system. Good passwords contain letters and non-letters. A good password might be: AbYc123

PC Card - Short for Picture Element. The smallest element in a digital image. A one-bit pixel can display one of two colors, a two-bit pixel can display one of four colors or shades of gray, four bits can display 16 colors or shades of gray, and so forth.

PCS (personal communication service/system) - A lower-power, higher-frequency competitive technology to cellular phones. Whereas cellular typically operates in the 800- to 900MHz range, PCS operates in the 1.5- to 1.8gigahertz range. (1 GHz = 1 billion Hertz.) The idea with PCS is that the phones have less range, but they are cheaper. Radio frequencies are auctioned by the Federal Communications Commission for these digital wireless services.

PDF - Portable Document Format - The file format for documents created using Adobe Acrobat. PDF documents allow people to share formatted documents across different platforms. To create a PDF document, you use Adobe Acrobat Exchange and print the existing document to a file. The PDF file can be viewed using the Acrobat Reader, which is distributed free.

POP (Point of Presence) - The point or telephone number that permits connection into the Internet network. The POPs are set up to both distribute Internet traffic and to avoid telephone charges by providing a local connection.

POP Post Office Protocol - A protocol used to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Most e-mail applications (sometimes called an e-mail client) use the POP protocol, although some can use the newer IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). There are two versions of POP. The first, called POP2, became a standard in the mid-80's and requires SMTP to send messages. The newer version, POP3, can be used with or without SMTP.

Portal - A site on the Internet that's marketed as an entrance to other sites on the Internet. Under this concept, the portal is the first site to be visited when a user goes online--and thus the ads on a portal can be sold at a premium.
A portal typically includes a search engine, free e-mail, instant messaging, chat, personalized home pages and Web hosting. America Online and CompuServe may have been the first portal companies.

Posting - A single message entered into a network communications system. Ex.. A single message posted to a newsgroup or message board.

POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) - . Used to describe standard voice-grade telephone service.

PPP (Point to Point Protocol) - A protocol that allows a computer to connect to the Internet with a standard dial-up telephone line and a high-speed modem, and enjoy most of the benefits of a direct connection. PPP is considered to be better than SLP because it features error detection, data compression and other elements of modern communications protocols that SLP (the older Internet protocol) lacks.

Protocol - A set of rules, procedures or conventions governing the format and timing of messages exchanged between two devices, such as computers.

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