ADSL -- (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) A DSL line where the upload speed is different from the download speed. usually the download speed is much greater.
See also: DSL, SDSL

ActiveX -- Developed by Microsoft corporation, ActiveX is a technology used to add interactivity to Web pages. With ActiveX, you can add interactive controls to Web pages. These controls can be anything from a single push-button to a complete spreadsheet.

ActiveX controls only work in certain browsers. Of course, Microsoft's latest release of its own Web browser, Internet Explorer, recognizes ActiveX controls. Netscape Navigator browser does not recognize these controls.

The user's browser downloads ActiveX controls when needed. In this way, ActiveX controls are similar to Java applets.
See also: Applet, Browser

Anonymous FTP
See also: FTP

Applet A small Java program that can be embedded in an HTML page. Applets differ from full-fledged Java applications in that they are not allowed to access certain resources on the local computer, such as files and serial devices (modems, printers, etc.), and are prohibited from communicating with most other computers across a network. The common rule is that an applet can only make an Internet connection to the computer from which the applet was sent.
See also: HTML, Java

ASCII -- (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) This is the defacto 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 codes each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number: 0000000 through 1111111.

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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 57,000 bits in one second. Full-motion full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression.
See also: Bit, bps, T-1

Baud In common usage the baud rate of a modem is how many bits it can send or receive per second. Technically, baud is the number of times per second that the carrier signal shifts value - for example a 1200 bit-per-second modem actually runs at 300 baud, but it moves 4 bits per baud (4 x 300= 1200 bits per second).
See also: Bit, Modem

Binary Information consisting entirely of ones and zeros. Also, commonly used to refer to files that are not simply text files, e.g. images.
See also: MIME, UUENCODE

Binhex -- (BINary HEXadecimal) A method for converting non-text files (non-ASCII) into ASCII. This is needed because Internet e-mail can only handle ASCII.
See also: ASCII, MIME, UUENCODE

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. Bandwidthis usually measured in bits-per-second.
See also: Bandwidth, Bit, bps, Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte

bps -- (Bits-Per-Second) A measurement of how fast data is moved from one place to another. A 56K modem can move about 57,000 bits per second.
See also: Bandwidth, Bit

Browser A Client program (software) that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.
See also: Client, Server, URL, WWW

BTW -- (By The Way) A shorthand appended to a comment written in an online forum.
See also: IMHO

Byte A set of Bits that represent a single character. Usually there are 8 Bits in a Byte, sometimes more, depending on how the measurement is being made.
See also: Bit

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Certificate Authority An issuer of Security Certificates used in SSL connections.
See also: SSL

CGI -- (Common Gateway Interface) A set of rules that describe how a Web Server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine, and how the other piece of software (the ?CGI program?) talks to the web server. Any piece of software can be a CGI program if it handles input and output according to the CGI standard.
See also: Server, WWW

cgi-bin The most common name of a directory on a web server in which CGI programs are stored.
See also: CGI

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. A Web Browser is a specific kind of Client.
See also: Browser, Client, Server

Cookie The most common meaning of "Cookie" on the Internet refers to a piece of information sent by a Web Server to a Web Browser that the Browser software is expected to save and to send back to the Server whenever the browser makes additional requests from the Server.

Depending on the type of Cookie used, and the Browsers' settings, the Browser may accept or not accept the Cookie, and may save the Cookie for either a short time or a long time.

Cookies might contain information such as login or registration information, online "shopping cart" information, user preferences, etc.

When a Server receives a request from a Browser that includes a Cookie, the Server is able to use the information stored in the Cookie. For example, the Server might customize what is sent back to the user, or keep a log of particular users' requests.

Cookies are usually set to expire after a predetermined amount of time and are usually saved in memory until the Browser software is closed down, at which time they may be saved to disk if their "expire time" has not been reached.

Cookies do not read your hard drive and send your life story to the CIA, but they can be used to gather more information about a user than would be possible without them.
See also: Browser, Server

Cult3D enables users to create the most interactive objects available on the Web today. Cult objects have full transparency, reflectivity, particle systems, bump mapping, phong shading, movement and sound, showing the object as it really is, even in the smallest details. Cult3D objects respond to the click of a mouse, letting users zoom and spin, click and feel, move parts and experience sounds, creating a multi-sensory experience, one that the user will remember. Cult3D can accurately render something as complex as a personal digital assistant (PDA), or as unique as the human head.
See also: Plug-in

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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 (.net in the examples above). It is also possible for a Domain Name to exist but not be connected to an actual machine. This is often done so that a group or business can have an Internet e-mail address without having to establish a real Internet site. In these cases, some real Internet machine must handle the mail on behalf of the listed Domain Name.
See also: IP Number

DSL -- (Digital Subscriber Line) A method for moving data over regular phone lines. A DSL circuit is much faster than a regular phone connection, and the wires coming into the subscriber's premises are the same (copper) wires used for regular phone service. A DSL circuit must be configured to connect two specific locations, similar to a leased line (however a DSL circuit is not a leased line.

A common configuration of DSL allows downloads at speeds of up to 1.544 megabits (not megabytes) per second, and uploads at speeds of 128 kilobits per second. This arrangement is called ADSL: Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line.

Another common configuration is symmetrical: 384 Kilobits per second in both directions.

In theory ADSL allows download speeds of up to 9 megabits per second and upload speeds of up to 640 kilobits per second.

DSL is now a popular alternative to Leased Lines and ISDN, being faster than ISDN and less costly than traditional Leased Lines. See also: ADSL, Bandwidth, ISDN, Leased Line, SDSL


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Email -- (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.
See also: Listserv..., SMTP

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

Fire Wall A combination of hardware and software that separates a Network into two or more parts for security purposes.
See also: Network

Flame Originally, "flame" meant to carry forth in a passionate manner in the spirit of honorable debate. Flames most often involved the use of flowery language and flaming well was an art form. More recently flame has come to refer to any kind of derogatory comment no matter how witless or crude.

Flash -- (Macromedia Flash) is an authoring tool that allows you to create anything from a simple animation to a complex interactive web application, such as an online store. You can make your Flash applications media rich by adding pictures, sound, and video.
See also: Flash Player

Flash Player -- The Macromedia Flash Player (Plug-In) is distributed with products from every major partner, including Microsoft, Apple, Netscape, AOL, and Opera, to bring rich content and applications immediately to over 516 million people worldwide. The Flash Player (Plug-In) is distributed freely to anyone who wants to use it. The Macromedia Flash Player (Plug-In) is safe and will not harm your system and once you have accepted the plug-in you don't have to download it ever again.
See also: Flash, Plug-in

FTP -- (File Transfer Protocol) A very common method of moving files between two Internet sites.

FTP is a 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".

FTP was invented and in wide use long before the advent of the World Wide Web and originally was always used from a text-only interface. See also: Login, WWW

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Gateway The technical meaning is a hardware or software set-up that translates between two dissimilar protocols, for example America Online 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.

GIF -- (Graphic Interchange Format) A common format for image files, especially suitable for images containing large areas of the same color. GIF format files of simple images are often smaller than the same file would be if stored in JPEG format, but GIF format does not store photographic images as well as JPEG.
PNG is pronounced with soft G (like giraffe) is correct; it is how the author of the format pronounces it.
See also: JPEG, PNG

Gigabyte 1024 Megabytes.
See also: Byte

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Hit As used in reference to the World Wide Web, ?hit? means a single request from a web browser for a single item from a web server; thus in order for a web browser to display a page that contains 3 graphics, 4 ?hits? would occur at the server: 1 for the HTML page, and one for each of the 3 graphics.
See also: Browser, HTML, Server

Home Page (or Homepage) Several meanings. Originally, the web page that your browser is set to use when it starts up. The more common meaning refers to the main web page for a business, organization, person or simply the main page out of a collection of web pages.
See also: Browser, WWW

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 SMTP (email) and HTTP (web).
See also: Network, SMTP

HTML -- (HyperText Markup Language) The coding language used to 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.

The "hyper" in Hypertext comes from the fact that in HTML you can specify that a block of text, or an image, is linked to another file on the Internet. HTML files are meant to be viewed using a "Web Browser".

HTML is loosely based on a more comprehensive system for markup called SGML.
See also: Browser, Hypertext, WWW

HTTP -- (HyperText Transfer 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).
See also: Client, Hypertext, Server, 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.
See also: HTML, HTTP

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IMAP -- (Internet Message Access Protocol) IMAP is gradually replacing POP as the main protocol used by email clients in communicating with email servers.

Using IMAP an email client program can not only retrieve email but can also manipulate message stored on the server, without having to actually retrieve the messages. So messages can be deleted, have their status changed, multiple mail boxes can be managed, etc.
See also: Email, POP, RFC

internet (Lower case i) Any time you connect 2 or more networks together, you have an internet - as in inter-national or inter-state.
See also: Internet (Upper case I), Network

Internet (Upper case I) The vast collection of inter-connected networks that are connected using the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from the ARPANET of the late 60's and early 70's.

The Internet connects tens of thousands of independent networks into a vast global internet and is probably the largest Wide Area Network in the world.
See also: internet (Lower case i), Network, WAN

IP Number -- (Internet Protocol Number) Sometimes called a dotted quad. A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g.

209.165.911.100

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. Many machines (especially servers) also have one or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember.
See also: Domain Name, Server, TCP/IP

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.
See also: Server

ISDN -- (Integrated Services Digital Network) Basically a way to move more data over existing regular phone lines. ISDN is available to much of the USA and in most markets it is priced very comparably to standard analog phone circuits. It can provide speeds of roughly 128,000 bits-per-second over regular phone lines. In practice, most people will be limited to 56,000 or 64,000 bits-per-second.

Unlike DSL, ISDN can be used to connect to many different locations, one at a time, just like a regular telephone call, as long the other location also has ISDN.
See also: DSL

ISP -- (Internet Service Provider) An institution that provides access to the Internet in some form, usually for money.

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Java Java is a network-friendly programming language invented by Sun Microsystems.

Java is often used to build large, complex systems that involve several different computers interacting across networks, for example transaction processing systems.

Java is also becoming popular for creating programs that run in small electronic devices, such as mobile telephones.

A very common use of Java is to create programs that can be safely downloaded to your computer through the Internet and immediately run without fear of viruses or other harm to your computer or files. Using small Java programs (called "Applets"), Web pages can include functions such as animations,calculators, and other fancy tricks.
See also: Applet

JavaScript JavaScript is a programming language that is mostly used in web pages, usually to add features that make the web page more interactive. When JavaScript is included in an HTML file it relies upon the browser to interpret the JavaScript. When JavaScript is combined with Cascading Style Sheets(CSS), and later versions of HTML (4.0 and later) the result is often called DHTML.
See also: HTML

JPEG -- (Joint Photographic Experts Group) JPEG is most commonly mentioned as a format for image files. JPEG format is preferred to the GIF format for photographic images as opposed to line art or simple logo art.
JPEG is pronouced as it is spelled, j - peg("jay peg"). Named for the committe that designed the image compression algorithm.
See also: GIF, PNG

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Kilobyte A thousand bytes. Actually, usually 1024 (2¹⁰) bytes.
See also: Byte

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

Leased Line Refers to line such as a telephone line or fiber-optic cable that is rented for exclusive 24-hour, 7-days-a-week use from your location to another location. The highest speed data connections require a leased line.
See also: DSL, ISDN

Listserv ® The most common kind of maillist, "Listserv" is a registered trademark of L-Soft international, Inc. Listservs originated on BITNET but they are now common on the Internet.
See also: Internet (Upper case I), Maillist

Login Noun or a verb.

Noun: The account name used to gain access to a computer system. Not a secret (contrast with Password).

Verb: the act of connecting to a computer system by giving your credentials (usually your "username" and "password")
See also: Password

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Maillist (or Mailing List) A (usually automated) system that allows people to send e-mail to one address, whereupon their message is copied and sent to all of the other subscribers to the maillist. In this way, people who have many different kinds of e-mail access can participate in discussions together.
See also: Email, Listserv ®

Megabyte A million bytes. Actually, technically, 1024 kilobytes.
See also: Byte, Kilobyte

MIME -- (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Originally a standard for defining the types of files attached to standard Internet mail messages. The MIME standard has come to be used in many situations where one cmputer programs needs to communicate with another program about what kind of file is being sent.

For example, HTML files have a MIME-type of text/html, JPEG files are image/jpeg, etc.
See also: HTML, JPEG

Mirror Generally speaking, "to mirror" is to maintain an exact copy of something. Probably the most common use of the term on the Internet refers to "mirror sites" which are web sites, or FTP sites that maintain copies of material originated at another location, usually in order to provide more widespread access to the resource. For example, one site might create a library of software, and 5 other sites might maintain mirrors of that library.
See also: FTP, WWW

Modem -- (MOdulator, DEModulator) A device that connects a computer to a phone line. A telephone for a computer. A modem allows a computer to talk to other computers through the phone system. Basically, modems do for computers what a telephone does for humans.

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 was licensed by several companies and used to create many other web browsers.

Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), at the Univeristy of Urbana-Champange in Illinois, USA. The first version was released in late 1993.
See also: Browser, WWW

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Netiquette The etiquette on the Internet.

Netizen Derived from the term citizen, referring to a citizen of the Internet,or someone who uses networked resources. The term connotes civic responsibility and participation.

Netscape A WWW Browser and the name of a company. The Netscape (tm) browser was originally based on the Mosaic program developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).
See also: Mosaic

Network Any time you connect 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.
See also: internet (Lower case i)

Newsgroup The name for discussion groups on USENET.
See also: USENET

NIC -- (Network Information Center) Generally, any office that handles information for a network. The most famous of these on the Internet was the InterNIC, which was where most new domain names were registered until that process was decentralized to a number of private companies.
See also: Domain Name, Network

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Open Source Software Open Source Software is software for which the underlying programming code is available to the users so that they may read it, make changes to it, and build new versions of the software incorporating their changes. There are many types of Open Source Software, mainly differing in the licensing term under which (altered) copies of the source code may (or must be) redistributed.

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Password A code used to gain access (login) to a locked system. Good passwords contain letters and non-letters and are not simple combinations such as abc123.
See also: Login

Plug-in A (usually small) piece of software that adds features to a larger piece of software. Common examples are plug-ins for the Netscape® browser and web server. Adobe Photoshop® also uses plug-ins.
See also: Browser, Server

PNG The Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format provides a portable, legally unencumbered, well-compressed, well-specified standard for lossless bitmapped image files.

Although the initial motivation for developing PNG was to replace GIF (CompuServe's Graphics Interchange Format), the design provides some useful new features not available in GIF, with minimal cost to developers.
PNG is pronounced "ping".
See also: GIF, JPEG

POP -- (Point of Presence, also Post Office Protocol) Two commonly used meanings:
Point of Presence and Post Office Protocol.

A Point of Presence usually means a city or location where a network can be connected to, often with dial up phone lines. So if an Internet company says they will soon have a POP in Belgrade, it means that they will soon have a local phone number in Belgrade and/or a place where leased lines can connect to their network.

A second meaning, Post Office Protocol refers to a way that e-mail client software such as Eudora gets mail from a mail server. When you obtain an account from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) you almost always get a POP account with it, and it is this POP account that you tell your e-mail software to use to get your mail. Another protocol called IMAP is replacing POP for email.
See also: Client, Email, IMAP, ISP, Server

Portal Usually used as a marketing term to described a Web site that is or is intended to be the first place people see when using the Web. Typically a "Portal site" has a catalog of web sites, a search engine, or both. A Portal site may also offer email and other service to entice people to use that site as their main "point of entry" (hence "portal") to the Web.

Posting A single message entered into a network communications system.

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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 the Internet, as a Request For Comments. The proposal is reviewed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (http://www.ietf.org/), 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 message formats is RFC 822.

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

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SDSL -- (Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line) A version of DSL where the upload speeds and download speeds are the same.
See also: ADSL, DSL

Search Engine A (usually web-based) system for searching the information available on the Web.

Some search engines work by automatically searching the contents of other systems and creating a database of the results. other search engines contains only material manually approved for inclusion in a database, and some combine the two approaches.
See also: WWW

Security Certificate A chunk of information (often stored as a text file) that is used by the SSL protocol to establish a secure connection.
See also: SSL

Server 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 can (and often does) have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to clients on the network.
See also: Client, Network

Shockwave is a technology developed by Macromedia, Inc, that allows the user to view Web pages with multimedia objects. Macromedia Shockwave is for the creation and playback of fully interactive multimedia on the World Wide Web and corporate intranets. Shockwave supports audio, animation, video and processes user actions such as mouse clicks. It runs on all Windows platforms as well as the Macintosh.
To see a Shockwave object, you need the Shockwave plug-in, a program that integrates seamlessly with your Web browser. The plug-in is freely available from Macromedia's Web site as either a Netscape Navigator plug-in or an ActiveX control.
See also: Plug-in

SMTP -- (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) The main protocol used to send electronic mail from server to server on the Internet.

SMTP is defined in RFC 821 and modified by many later RFC's
See also: Email, RFC, Server

Spam (or Spamming) An inappropriate attempt to use a mailing list, or USENET or other networked communications facility as if it was a broadcast medium (which it is not) by sending the same message to a large number of people who didn?t ask for it. The term probably comes from a famous Monty Python skit which featured the word spam repeated over and over. The term may also have come from someone?s low opinion of the food product with the same name, which is generally perceived as a generic content-free waste of resources. (Spam® is a registered trademark of Hormel Corporation, for its processed meat product.)
See also: Maillist, USENET

SQL -- (Structured Query Language) A specialized language for sending queries to databases. Most industrial-strength and many smaller database applications can be addressed using SQL. Each specific application will have its own slightly different version of SQL implementing features unique to that application, but all SQL-capable databases support a common subset of SQL.

A example of an SQL statement is:

    SELECT name,email FROM people_table WHERE state='ca'

SSL -- (Secure Socket Layer) A protocol designed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet.

Sysop -- (System Operator) Anyone responsible for the physical operations of a computer system or network resource. For example, a System Administrator decides how often backups and maintenance should be performed and the System Operator performs those tasks.

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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 lines are commonly used to connect large LANs to theInternet.
See also: Bit, Internet (Upper case I), LAN, Leased Line

T-3 A leased-line connection capable of carrying data at 44,736,000 bits-per-second. This is more than enough to do full-screen, full-motion video.
See also: Internet (Upper case I), LAN, Leased Line

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 included with every major kind of computer operating system. To be truly on the Internet, your computer must have TCP/IP software.
See also: Internet (Upper case I), Unix

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.
See also: Host, Login

Terabyte 1000 gigabytes.
See also: Gigabyte

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.

Terminal Server A special purpose computer that has places to plug in many modems on one side, and a connection to a LAN or host machine onthe other side. Thus the terminal server does the work of answering the calls and passes the connections on to the appropriate node. Most terminal servers can provide PPP or SLIP services if connectedto the Internet.

TLD -- (Top Level Domain) The portion of a traditional domain name that comes after the dot. So, in yahoo.com, the top level domain is .com. The generic top level domains (gTLDs) are .com, .net and .org; there are also country code top level domains (ccTLDs) such as .ca, .am, .ru, .eu, .us, .au,.uk.
See also: Domain name
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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) and has TCP/IP built-in. It is the most common operating system for servers on the Internet.

Apple computers' Macintosh operating system, as of version 10, is based on Unix.
See also: Server, TCP/IP

URI -- (Uniform Resource Identifier) An address for s resource available on the Internet.

The first part of a URI is called the "scheme", the most well known scheme is http, but there are many others. Each URI scheme has its own format for how a URI should appear.
See also: URL, URN

URL -- (Uniform Resource Locator) The term URL is basically synonymous with URI. URI has replaced URL in technical specifications.
See also: URI, URN

URN -- (Uniform Resource Name) A URI that is supposed to be available for a long time. For an address to be a URN some institution is supposed to make a commitment to keep the resource available at that address.
See also: URI

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. USENET is completely decentralized, with over 10,000 discussion areas, called newsgroups.
See also: Newsgroup

UUENCODE -- (Unix to Unix Encoding) A method for converting files from Binary to ASCII (text) so that they can be sent across the Internet via e-mail
See also: ASCII, Binary, Email

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VRML -- (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) The contents of a VRML file are called a "world".This does not mean that the builder of a VRML world needs to model the whole planet; many VRML worlds are single objects. VRML is a scene description language, which describes 3D environments over the Net. When you access a URL, a "Unique Resource Locator",containing a VRML world, a file is downloaded into your Web browser. VRML Worlds usually end with the file extention .wrl or .wrl.gz as opposed to .html. When your browser sees a file with the .wrl file extension it tells your computer to launch your VRML viewer. Straight VRML files are actually very small, especially if special optimization steps are taken.
See also: HTML

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WAIS -- (Wide Area Information Servers) A commercial software package that allows the indexing of huge quantities of information, and then making those indices searchable across networks such as the Internet. A prominent feature of WAIS is that the search results are ranked (scored) according to how relevant the hits are, and that subsequent searches can find more stuff like that last batch and thus refine the search process.

WAN -- (Wide Area Network) Any internet or network that covers an area larger than a single building or campus.
See also: internet (Lower case i), LAN

WWW -- (World Wide Web) Frequently used (incorrectly) when referring to "The Internet", WWW has two major 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.
See also: FTP, Gopher, HTTP, Internet (Upper case I), URL

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