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| INTERNET DICTIONARY - LETTER "A" | |
| abstract syntax | A description of a data structure that is independent of machine- oriented structures and encodings. Source: RFC1208 |
| Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) | The language used by the OSI protocols for describing abstract syntax. This language is also used to encode SNMP packets. ASN.1 is defined in ISO documents 8824.2 and 8825.2. See also: Basic Encoding Rules. |
| Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) | Many transit networks have policies which restrict the use to which the network may be put. A well known example is NSFNET's AUP which does not allow commercial use. Enforcement of AUPs varies with the network. See also: National Science Foundation. |
| access | To get into a computer system, dial-up service, or network, by dialing a phone number, logging on a network such as the Internet, and retrieving data. |
| access control | Ways to protect confidential data in a computer or on a computer network from unauthorized access. |
| Access Control List (ACL) | Most network security systems operate by allowing selective use of services. An Access Control List is the usual means by which access to, and denial of, services is controlled. It is simply a list of the services available, each with a list of the hosts permitted to use the service. |
| access time | The time it takes a device to retrieve stored data. Technically speaking, access time is the time interval between the instant a computer calls for data from a storage medium (like a hard disk or CD-ROM) and the instant the data is delivered. This can be a matter of minutes or just microseconds from a computer's DRAM. |
| AccessWatch | A World Wide Web utility that provides a comprehensive view of daily activity for a particular Web site. It is equally capable of gathering statistics for an entire server. It provides a regularly updated summary of WWW server hits and accesses, and gives a graphical representation of available statistics. It generates statistics for hourly server load, page demand, accesses by domain, and accesses by host. AccessWatch parses the WWW server log and searches for a common set of documents, usually specified by a user's root directory, such as /~username/ or /users/username. AccessWatch displays results in a graphical, compact format. This program runs on a UNIX platorm. |
| ACDSee | A graphic image viewer and editor for Windows 95 which supports among others the image file formats GIF and JPEG (JPG). |
| ACK | See: Acknowledgment |
| acknowledgment (ACK) | A type of message sent to indicate that a block of data arrived at its destination without error. See also: Negative Acknowledgment. |
| ACL | See: Access Control List |
| ActiveX Control | An applet based on Microsoft technologies that enables interactive content on Web pages. See also ActiveX. |
| AD | See: Administrative Domain |
| ad banner | An advertisement on a Web page that links to an advertiser's site or buffer page. Ad banners are the most common unit of advertising on the Web and cost anywhere from free to upwards of $15,000 per month depending on the amount of visitors the Web site gets. The standard size for an ad banner set by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) is 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high. |
| ADC | analog-to-digtal converter - the conversion of data or signal storage from analog format, like the continous electrical vibrations triggered by a voice on a phone, to the on-off digital format of computer code. SEE ALSO: binary |
| address | There are three types of addresses in common use within the Internet. They are email address; IP, internet or Internet address; and hardware or MAC address. See also: email address, IP address, internet address, MAC address. |
| address mask | A bit mask used to identify which bits in an IP address correspond to the network and subnet portions of the address. This mask is often referred to as the subnet mask because the network portion of the address can be determined by the encoding inherent in an IP address. |
| address resolution | Conversion of an internet address into the corresponding physical address. |
| Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) | Used to dynamically discover the low level physical network hardware address that corresponds to the high level IP address for a given host. ARP is limited to physical network systems that support broadcast packets that can be heard by all hosts on the network. It is defined in RFC 826. See also: proxy ARP. |
| Administrative Domain (AD) | A collection of hosts and routers, and the interconnecting network(s), managed by a single administrative authority. |
| Ad Server | A program or a type server which manages and maintains advertisement banners for a Web site or collection of Web sites. These programs are extremely sophisticated and are capable of keeping track and reporting Web site usage statistics on users. Ads can then be targeted towards certain types of individuals. It also provides the ability to rotate banners so a user won't see the same ad everytime they come back to the same page. SEE ALSO: NetGravity. |
| Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) | A pioneering longhaul network funded by ARPA (now DARPA). It served as the basis for early networking research, as well as a central backbone during the development of the Internet. The ARPANET consisted of individual packet switching computers interconnected by leased lines. See also: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Source: FYI4 |
| agent | In the client-server model, the part of the system that performs information preparation and exchange on behalf of a client or server application. Source: RFC1208 |
| alias | A name, usually short and easy to remember, that is translated into another name, usually long and difficult to remember. |
| aliasing & anti-aliasing | Unrealistic visual effects on a computer screen are known as aliasing. These peculiarities take many forms; one of the most common would be images with jagged edges or stair-stepped appearances along what is supposed to be a smooth curved surfaces (like O or S) and/or diagonal lines on the screen. Sometimes called the jaggies. Anti-aliasing is a software technique used in imaging systems (such as Adobe Photoshop) to make these curved edges or diagonal lines look smooth and continous. |
| alphanumeric | Characters which consist of letters, numbers, punctuation, and symbols found on a standard keyboard. |
| alt text | The text you see before an image is loaded on a Web page. A Web site author can code an alt tag when building a Web page to say anything they want. Usually it is a description of the picture or image. |
| American National Standards Institute (ANSI) | This organization is responsible for approving U.S. standards in many areas, including computers and communications. Standards approved by this organization are often called ANSI standards (e.g., ANSI C is the version of the C language approved by ANSI). ANSI is a member of ISO. See also: International Organization for Standardization. Source: NNSC |
| American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) | A standard character-to-number encoding widely used in the computer industry. See also: EBCDIC. |
| anonymous FTP | Anonymous FTP allows a user to retrieve documents, files, programs, and other archived data from anywhere in the Internet without having to establish a userid and password. By using the special userid of "anonymous" the network user will bypass local security checks and will have access to publicly accessible files on the remote system. See also: archive site, File Transfer Protocol. |
| anonymous posting | A message posted to a newsgroup or e-mail discussion group that does not identify the person who sent it. |
| ANSI | See: American National Standards Institute |
| antialiasing | On computer monitors the pixels themselves aren't curved, but they have to show curves. Using polygons to simulate curves in alphanumeric characters or vector graphics makes the edges of objects appear jagged. The technique for smoothing out these jaggies is called antialiasing, and it usually takes the form of throwing in pixels of washed-out color along the curve. This actually makes text seem a little blurred but, strangely enough, more readable. |
| API | See: Application Program Interface |
| Appletalk | A networking protocol developed by Apple Computer for communication between Apple Computer products and other computers. This protocol is independent of the network layer on which it is run. Current implementations exist for Localtalk, a 235Kb/s local area network; and Ethertalk, a 10Mb/s local area network. Source: NNSC |
| application | program or software - all three of which refer to a computer program or set of programs that performs a specific job. World Wide Web browsers, HTML editors, and Netscape plugins are all examples of applications. This contrasts with an Operating System, such as MacOS or Windows, which manage how your computer performs tasks, and "runs" these applications. |
| application layer | The top layer of the network protocol stack. The application layer is concerned with the semantics of work (e.g., formatting electronic mail messages). How to represent that data and how to reach the foreign node are issues for lower layers of the network. Source: MALAMUD |
| Application Program Interface (API) | A set of calling conventions which define how a service is invoked through a software package. Source: RFC1208 |
| ARC | Augmentation Research Center - set up in the 1960's by Doug Engelbart, this lab at the Stanford Research Center in Palo Alto, is credited with developing GUI tools (mouse, graphical icons, and the hypertext system) that were expanded at Xerox PARC and 20 years later, became the basics of the Macintosh computer and operating system. ARC also developed ideas about teleconferencing, e-mail, and workgroup processing tools. |
| archive site | A machine that provides access to a collection of files across the Internet. An "anonymous FTP archive site", for example, provides access to this material via the FTP protocol. See also: anonymous FTP, archie, Gopher, Prospero, Wide Area Information Servers. |
| Archie | Acronym for ARCHIve sErver, an Internet searching tool that acts as a global card catalog for public computer files. Given a keyword, it automatically searches an index of registered worldwide archives of the Internet and provides pathway information that then can be used in conjunction with FTP. See also: archive site, Gopher, Prospero, Wide Area Information Servers. Definition courtesy of Wilson Library Bulletin, February 1994 |
| ARP | See: Address Resolution Protocol |
| ARPA | See: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency |
| ARPANET | Advanced Research Projects Agency Network - A pioneering longhaul network funded by ARPA (now DARPA). It served as the basis for early networking research, as well as a central backbone during the development of the Internet. The ARPANET consisted of individual packet switching computers interconnected by leased lines. See also: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Source: FYI4 |
| AS | See: Autonomous System |
| ASCII | See: American Standard Code for Information Interchange |
| ASCII art | An artform which has developed through the use of low-ASCII characters. It runs the gamut from simple little doo- dads in someone's sigfile to complicated random-dot 3D stereogram images which really work. SEE ALSO: smileys and emoticons. |
| ASN.1 | See: Abstract Syntax Notation One |
| assigned numbers | The RFC [STD2] which documents the currently assigned values from several series of numbers used in network protocol implementations. This RFC is updated periodically and, in any case, current information can be obtained from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). If you are developing a protocol or application that will require the use of a link, socket, port, protocol, etc., please contact the IANA to receive a number assignment. See also: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, STD. Source: STD2 |
| Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) | A method for the dynamic allocation of bandwidth using a fixed- size packet (called a cell). ATM is also known as "fast packet". |
| ATM | See: Asynchronous Transfer Mode |
| auditor | A third party company that tracks, counts and verifies ad banner deliveries (ad banners that are sent to a Web page from another location) or verifies a Web site's proprietary ad reporting system. This differs from a "counter" which is a company that strictly counts ad and page deliveries. |
| AUP | See: Acceptable Use Policy |
| authentication | The verification of the identity of a person or process. Source: MALAMUD |
| author | To create or publish a script, program, or document. Usually this is done with an authoring or scripting language such as C, C++, HTML, or Java. Whatever language you choose there are usually a wide variety of authoring tools which you can download or buy to help you. |
| Auto-Bot | A free automation tool that checks your POP3 mail server for new mail, downloads the waiting e-mail, sets your system clock to Internet time, and executes timed telnet sessions. |
| Autonomous System (AS) | A collection of routers under a single administrative authority using a common Interior Gateway Protocol for routing packets. |
| avatar | A digital "actor" or placeholder that represents where you are in the virtual world. 3D chat rooms and VRML worlds are examples of places where you would have an avatar. Usually this can be whatever you want, a cartoon, a fish, any graphical element just be aware that this image will represent who you are. |
| AVI | Audio Video Interleave - A Windows platform audio/video (multimedia) file. A common format which you will find on the Internet for small movies and videos. These files are usually pretty large and would require a connection of 28.8 or better to download in any kind of reasonable time. A 20 second movie clip in AVI format could be as much a 3MB in size and could take on average about 15 minutes to download on your computer. Some other types of video files found on the Internet include: MOV, MPEG, and ASF. For a much more detailed look at AVI files, click on the more button below. |
