ASCII
(American Standard Code for Information Interchange) -- this is the de facto world-wide standard for the code numbers used by computers to represent all the upper and lower-case latin letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. There are 128 standard ASCII co des each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number: 0000000 through 1111111

Bandwidth
How much "stuff" you can send through a connection. Usually measured in bits-per-second. A full page of english text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move about 15,000 bits in one second. Full-motion full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression.

Bit
(Binary DigIT) -- A single digit number in base-2, in other words, either a 1 or a zero. The smallest unit of computerized data. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits-per-second.

Browser
A client program (software) that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.

Byte
A set of Bits that represent a single character. Usually there are 8 or 10 bits in a Byte, depending on how the measurement is being made.

Client
A software program that is used to contact and obtain data from a Server software program on another computer, often across a great distance. Each Client program is designed to work with one or more specific kinds of Server programs, and each Server requires a specific kind of Client.

Cyberspace
Term originated by author William Gibson in his novel "Neuromancer", the word Cyberspace is currently used to describe the whole range of information resources available through computer networks.

Domain Name
The unique name that identifies an Internet site. Domain Names always have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. The part on the left is the most specific, and the part on the right is the most general. A given machine may have more than one Domain Name but a given Domain Name points to only one machine. Usually, all of the machines on a given network will have the same thing as the right-hand portion of their Domain Names, e.g.

             www.leectysch.com
             www.vt.edu
             ...and so on

E-mail
(Electronic Mail) -- Messages, usually text, sent from one person to another via computer. E-mail can also be sent automatically to a large number of addresses (Mailing List)

Ethernet
A very common method of networking computers in a LAN. Ethernet will handle about 10,000,000 bits-per-second and can be used with almost any kind of computer.

FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions) -- FAQs are documents that list and answer the most common questions on a particular subject. There are hundreds of FAQs on subjects as diverse as Horses and Star Trek. FAQs are usually written by people who have tired of answering the same question over and over.

FTP
(File Transfer Protocol) -- A very common method of moving files between two Internet sites. FTP is a special way to login to another Internet site for the purposes of retrieving and/or sending files. There are many Internet sites that have established publicly accessible repositories of material that can be obtained using FTP, by logging in using the account name "anonymous", thus these sites are called "anonymous ftp servers".

Finger
An Internet software tool for locating people on other Internet sites. Finger is also sometimes used to give access to non-personal information, but the most common use is to see if a person has an account at a particular Internet site. Many sites do not allow incoming Finger requests, but many do.

Gateway
The technical meaning is a hardware or software set-up that translates between two dissimilar protocols, for example Prodigy has a gateway that translates between its internal, proprietary e-mail format and Internet e-mail format. Another, sloppier meaning of gateway is to describe any mechanism for providing access to another system, e.g. AOL might be called a gateway to the Internet.

Gopher
A widely successful method of making menus of material available over the Internet. Gopher is a Client and Server style program, which requires that the user have a Gopher Client program. Although Gopher spread rapidly across the globe in only a couple of years, it is being largely supplanted by Hypertext, also known as WWW (World Wide Web). There are still thousands of Gopher Servers on the Internet and we can expect they will remain for a while.

Host
Any computer on a network that is a repository for services available to other computers on the network. It is quite common to have one host machine provide several services, such as WWW and USENET

HTML
(HyperText Markup Language) -- The coding language used create Hypertext documents for use on the World Wide Web. HTML looks a lot like old-fashioned typesetting code, where you surround a block of text with codes that indicate how it should appear, additionally, in HTML you can specify that a block of text, or a word, is "linked" to another file on the Internet. HTML files are meant to be viewed using a World Wide Web Client program, such as Mosaic.

HTTP
(HyperText Transport Protocol) -- The protocol for moving hypertext files across the Internet. Requires a HTTP client program on one end, and an HTTP server program on the other end. HTTP is the most important protocol used in the World Wide Web (WWW).

Hypertext
Generally, any text that contains "links" to other documents - words or phrases in the document that can be chosen by a reader and which cause another document to be retrieved and displayed.

IMHO
(In My Humble Opinion) -- A shorthand appended to a comment written in an online forum, IMHO indicates that the writer is aware that they are expressing a debatable view, probably on a subject already under discussion. One of many such shorthands in common use online, especially in discussion forums.

IP Number
Sometimes called a "dotted quad". A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g.

                206.26.235.13

Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP number - if a machine does not have an IP number, it is not really on the Internet. Most machines also have one or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember.

IRC
(Internet Relay Chat) -- Basically a huge multi-user live chat facility. There are a number 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 more data over existing regular phone lines. ISDN is only slowly becoming available in the USA but where it is available, it can provide speeds of 64,000 bits-per-second over a regular phone line at almost the same cost as a normal phone call.

Internet (upper case I)
The vast collection of inter-connected networks that all use the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from the ARPANET of the late 60's and early '70s. The Internet now (July 1995) connects roughly 60,000 independent networks into a vast global internet.

internet (lower case i)
Any time you connect 2 or more networks together, you have an internet - as in inter-national or inter-state.

Kilobyte
A thousand bytes. Actually, usually, 1024 (2^10) bytes.

LAN
(Local Area Network) -- A computer network limited to the immediate area, usually the same building or floor of the building.

Megabyte
A million bytes. A thousand kilobytes.

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 and there are several other pieces of software as good or better than Mosaic, most notably "Netscape".

Network
Any time you connected 2 or more computers together so that they can share resources you have a computer network. Connect 2 or more networks together and you have an internet.

Node
Any single computer connected to a network.

RFC
(Request For Comments) -- the name of the result and the process for creating a standard on the Internet . New standards are proposed and published on line, as a "Request For Comments". The Internet Engineerng Task Force is a consensus-building body that facilitates discussion, and eventually a new standard is established, but the reference number/name for the standard retains the acronym "RFC", e.g. the official standard for e-mail is RFC 822.

Router
A special-purpose computer (or software package) that handles the connection between 2 or more networks . Routers spend all their time looking at the destination addresses of the packets passing through them and deciding which route to send them on.

Server (see Client)
A computer, or a software package, that provides a specific kind of service to client software running on other computers. The term can refer to a particular piece of software, such as a WWW server, or to the machine on which the software is running, e.g. "Our mail server is down today, that's why e-mail isn't getting out." A single server machine could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different services to clients on the network.

T-1
A leased-line connection capable of carrying data at 1,544,000 bits -per-second. At maximum theoretical capacity, a T-1 line could move a megabyte in less than 10 seconds. That is still not fast enough for full-screen, full-motion video, for which you need at least 10,000,000 bits-per-second. T-1 is the fastest speed commonly used to connect networks to the Internet.

TCP/IP
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) -- This is the suite of protocols that defines The Internet . Originally designed for the UNIX operating system, TCP/IP software is now available for every major kind of computer operating system. To be truly on the Internet , your computer must have TCP/IP software.

Telnet
The command and program used to login from one Internet site to another. The telnet command/program gets you to the "login:" prompt of another host.

Terminal
A device that allows you to send commands to a computer somewhere else. At a minimum, this usually means a keyboard and a display screen and some simple circuitry. usually you will use terminal software in a personal computer - the software pretends to be ("emulates") a physical terminal and allows you to type commands to a computer somewhere else.

URL
URL (Uniform Resource Locator) -- The standard way to give the address of any resource on the Internet that is part of the World Wide Web (WWW). A URL looks like this:

                 http://vo-tech.leectysch.com/glossary.htm
                 or   telnet://well.sf.ca.us
                 or    news:new.newusers.questions
                 etc.

Usenet
A world-wide system of discussion groups, with comments passed among hundreds of thousands of machines. Not all Usenet machines are on the Internet , maybe half. Usenet is completely decentralized, with over 10,000 discussion areas, called newsgroups.

WAN
(Wide Area Network) -- Any internet or network that covers an area larger than a single building or campus.

WWW (World Wide Web)
Two meanings - First, loosely used: The whole constellation of resources that can be accessed using Gopher , FTP , HTTP , telnet , Usenet , WAIS and some other tools. Second, the universe of hypertext servers (HTTP servers ) which are the servers that allow text, graphics, sound files etc to be mixed together.