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Glossary of Common Internet Terms

In using the Internet, you will likely come across several terms that are new to you. We aim to assist you in this by defining some of these terms:

Backbone

A high-speed line or series of connections that form a major pathway within a network. The Internet is composed of millions of computers that are connected together and all of the data that is sent from one computer to another eventually travels on one of a few main backbones. You can think of your request to view a web page over the Internet as similar to your daily drive to work. Your boss calls to let you know that you are needed (your request to the web server for the page - likely by clicking on a hyperlink with your browser). You jump in your car and back out of your driveway (the web server sends out the information in a "packet"). You drive down your street (the server's Internet connection) until you reach the first intersection (one of several Internet hubs located around the world). As you drive from street to street, you go through several more intersections (hubs) and encounter many other vehicles (other information packets) which are all heading to different destinations (because their bosses have also sent requests for them). Hopefully, as your trip progresses, you move from smaller two-lane roads to larger multi-lane streets which can handle the increased volume of traffic (the bandwidth). And when you reach the 8-lane freeway (the backbone), the largest road on which you travel, you should encounter the fewest number of delays (if your city planners where thinking ahead). At your exit, you leave the freeway to travel over several more smaller streets (more Internet hubs) until you pull into the parking lot at work. When you walk into your boss' office (hopefully smiling brightly), it is the end of the trip when the page you requested shows proudly on your computer screen. Of course, the trip that each data packet makes is much, much quicker than your drive to work (typically in less than a second), which is a good thing, because each time you view a new page (or send an email or watch a video), this process is repeated. Doesn't it make you tired just thinking of how much work the page you are reading now went through just to show up on your screen?

 Bandwidth
Bandwidth describes your Internet connection's capacity to transfer data, usually measured in kilo-bits per second (kbps). The greater the bandwidth, the more data that can travel over it at one time. A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits or 15.6kbps. A 14.4 modem (14.4kbps) could display that single page of text in about 1 second and a 28.8 modem could do it in about half that time. Higher capacity lines are typically used by web servers and other networks that are connected through the Internet. A T1 line transfers data about 50 times as fast as a 28.8 modem and a T3 is about 30 times faster than a T1.

It is important to remember that the speed at which data will move from Point A to Point B is restricted by the bandwidth anywhere along the line. So if you have a super-fast cable modem on your computer, the information that you are seeking may still be delayed because somewhere between the web server and your computer is a connection that has too much data for its bandwidth (a bottleneck) and your information must wait its turn before it is sent along the line.

Bandwidth is an important element for the average Internet user (just take a look at how many Internet Service Providers brag about the speed of their connections), but it is vital to the companies with web sites. If your site isn't hosted on a server which can handle the high levels of traffic that you will be experiencing, then your visitors will be stuck waiting to view your information (or more likely, they'll move on to your competitors).

 Banner Ad
An advertiser or sponsor's advertisement on a web page. Often this is presented as a graphic and provides a link to the advertiser's web site.

 Browser
A browser is software, just like a word-processing or spreadsheet program, only instead of creating letters and graphs, a browser enables you to see web pages. Mosaic was the first browser, while Netscape and Internet Explorer are the most commonly used nowadays. The advent of browsers transformed the Internet - formerly a dry, text-based thing only a government official or academician could love - into the colorful, user-friendly web we know and use.

How it works: Browsers take text files written in HTML (which is the coding language that gussies up plain-old text with images, sound clips, and links to other web pages) and assemble all the relevant pieces into one colorful, easy-to-digest web page. Browsers can also host a variety of additional features, including email, chat rooms, newsgroups, online gaming, and more.

CGI
The Common Gateway Interface is what all servers use to process requests from applications like your browser. A gateway is a program, or script, that acts as mediator between servers (the computers where web sites are stored) and clients (your computer), and can be written using any programming language - C, C++, Perl, Python, TCL, Java, and so on. On the web, gateway programs are most often used to process forms, where they play go-between from your browser to a database, doing things like processing keyword search requests, retrieving up-to-the-minute scores for the Bulls game, or telling you the current temperature in Peoria.

Click-Through
The process of moving, via a link, from one web page or web site to another. This phrase is commonly used to refer to clicking on a banner ad and visiting an advertiser's web site.

 Client/Server
A computer running software that allows it to provide information to other computers is a server. Clients are the computers that run software - browsers like Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer - that enables them to request info from the servers. Email, documents, and web sites live on servers - they are the tender morsels that eager, mama-bird servers regurgitate into the hungry beaks of clients.

Content
The information on presented on a web site or web page. This may be in the form of text, graphics, audio or video.

 Cookies
Following the strange tradition of naming Internet functions after food (Spam, Java, cracker), cookies are unobtrusive little bits of information that slip onto your hard drive, essentially without your knowledge, and track where and what you've done on a particular web site. Cookies are useful when it comes to sites that require registration (the cookie stores your data so you don't have to remember yet another password) or with configurable sites (the cookie is used to keep track of what interests you most so the site can present that information first).

dHTML (Dynamic HTML)
By combining HTML, stylesheets, and scripts, dynamic HTML makes possible web pages that can change (and even be animated) after they've been downloaded from a server, without the need for further communication from the web server. A user clicks or rolls over something, and suddenly text changes size, color, or location; graphics disappear, animate, or move around; bells ring and whistles chirp.

Domain Name
Each server has its very own IP (Internet protocol) address, which is a long string of numbers and dots. However, since we humans have trouble remembering all those numbers, the domain name was created.

The domain name in http://www.yahoo.com is yahoo.com, and it acts as a substitute for the IP numbers. If you really wanted to, you could type in a site's IP number, but it's much easier to use the handy-dandy domain name and let the server translate it using its DNS (domain-name-server) software.

Each top-level domain name has a suffix that indicates what kind of organization is hosting the site:

  • com - commercial businesses
  • net - network organizations
  • edu - educational institutions
  • org - nonprofit organizations
  • gov - government agencies
  • mil - military

The first step toward getting yourself one of those yournamehere.com addresses is to find a name that isn't taken. Once you find a free name (there are plenty of companies out there that would love to help you in your search), then you have to register it with Internic, the organization that keeps track of which domain names correspond with what IP numbers (there are also many agents that will register your name).

 Download/Upload
When you copy a file from another computer to your own, you're downloading. In theory, when you view a web page, you're downloading it from a web server to your computer. But in practice, people say they're accessing (or simply viewing) a web page. Typically, "downloading" as a term is used in reference to files retrieved off the Net. As in, "Have you finished downloading the latest MP3 song from Barry Manilow?" The opposite term, "uploading," refers to moving files from your computer to another. If you have a web site, you upload new pages to the server when you want other people to be able to see them.

Email
Where once bar-going singles exchanged phone numbers, now it's the email address that gets scrawled across the backs of matchbooks. Short for "electronic mail", email is sent and received by millions of people worldwide. No more waiting on the whims of the post office (and its old-school "snailmail"); now people exchange simple, text-based messages (or even with images, sound files, or other attachments) that arrive at their destination almost instantaneously.

Form
A form is a graphical user interface (GUI) that lets web site visitors leave their mark via enter-text-here fields, buttons, checkboxes, pulldown menus, and scrolling lists. Once users feel they've said their fill, they finally submit the form. Then the contents of their form are sent to the site's web server for processing via a CGI program, which can store the submitted data in a database or use it to do things like sending a "hey, thanks" email or performing a search for requested info.

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. When the files that make up your web site (the HTML files, graphics, videos, etc.) are transferred to your web server, this is likely done through FTP.

 Home Page
Usually, the starting page for a web site, from which secondary pages are linked. May also refer to a collection of web pages or a web site.

 HTML
The acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. This is the computer language used to code information on the web. Your web browser interprets the HTML of web pages to present the information to you in a format as defined by the programmer.

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

Hypertext
This is the term used to describe the ability of web pages to transport you to a new page (or to send an email, listen to a sound file, watch a video, etc.) when you click on a linked word, phrase or graphic.

 Internet
The Internet is a collection of computers around the world that are linked together through an international network. This network is relatively unstructured and is growing at a dizzying pace. The actual operation of it is complicated and more than you need to understand to become involved. You may think of your web site as a collection of files that is stored on a computer (web server) that is permanently connected to the Internet's network. This means that your web site is "open for business" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 ISP (Internet Service Provider)
A company or institution that provides access to the Internet. It is through an ISP that you likely connect to the Internet. Your computer dials up the local phone number of the ISP and through their modems and networks, you are connected to the millions of other computers available on the Internet world wide.

 POP (Post Office Protocol)
Post Office Protocol refers to the way email software such as Eudora or Microsoft Outlook gets mail from a mail server. When you obtain an account with an ISP, you most likely receive a POP email account as well. It is this POP account that your e-mail software uses to send and receive your email.

 Search Engine
Huge databases of addresses to web sites and web pages that allow users to search for information on a specific topic. Most search engines allow you to search by category or by entering key words. Your web site can be included in a search engine's database by adding your information on their registration form.

 SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
A protocol designed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet. SSL is used mostly (but not exclusively) in communications between web browsers and web servers to ensure that the connection is secure and cannot be intercepted in a usable format. URL's that begin with "https" indicate that an SSL connection will be used.

SSL provides 3 important things: Privacy, Authentication, and Message Integrity. In an SSL connection each side of the connection must have a Security Certificate, which each side's software sends to the other. Each side then encrypts what it sends using information from both its own and the other side's Certificate, ensuring that only the intended recipient can de-crypt it, and that the other side can be sure the data came from the place it claims to have come from, and that the message has not been tampered with.

UNIX
A computer operating system (the basic software running on a computer, underneath things like word processors and spreadsheets). UNIX is designed to be used by many people at the same time (it is multi-user). It is the most common operating system for servers on the Internet.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
Also known as the "web address", this is the standard way to give the location of any resource on the World Wide Web (WWW). A URL looks like this: http://www.hostreview.com/index.html . The most common way to use a URL is to enter into a browser program, such as Netscape or Internet Explorer.

Web Page
A page of information stored on the web and presented to you through your web browser. A single web page may be made up of several files including text files, graphics, audio and video. May also refer to a collection of pages which make up a web site.

 Web Server or Hosting Provider
A company or institution that provides web space to companies or individuals, usually for money. This is the computer (or computers) on which the files that make up your web site are stored so that they are accessible to Internet users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 Web Site
A collection of web pages which are typically connected together through hyper text links.

World Wide Web (WWW)
This is the aspect that most people think of when they hear the word Internet. It is only one component of the Internet, but because it offers formatted text, graphics, audio and video, it is one of the most used features (second only to email).

The World Wide Web is made up of web sites which are made up of one or more web pages.

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