Glossary of Terms

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A

Acceptable Use Policy - A set of rules describing which sorts of activities are permitted during the use of a network, server, web site, e-mail or newsgroup.

Account - Just like at a bank, computers used by more than one-person use accounts to keep track of (and bill) who's doing what on their system. When you sign up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP), you're given an account name that allows you access.

Address - An address by which the Internet identifies you so that people can send you mail. It usually looks something like username@ispname.net, where username is your username, login name, or account number, and ispname is the Internet's name for the computer or Internet provider you use. Also See: E-mail

ADSL - (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) a communications protocol for connecting computers and other electronic devices to a network, such as the Internet. ADSL offers more bandwidth than current telephone modem connections. ADSL can operate over most existing telephone lines but is currently available in only a few areas and generally costs more. Also See: DSL

Alt - Type of newsgroup that discusses alternative-type topics. The alt groups are not official newsgroups, but lots of people read them anyway. We particularly like alt.folklore.urban and alt.folklore.suburban.

America Online (AOL) - A public Internet provider. If you have an account on AOL, your Internet address is username@aol.com, where username is your account name.

AND (Advanced Digital Network) - Usually refers to a 56Kbps leased-line.

Anonymous FTP - A method of using the FTP program to log on to another computer to copy files, even though you don't have an account on the other computer. When you log on, you enter anonymous as the username and your address as the password, and you get access to publicly available files. Also See: 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 current rule is that an applet can only make an Internet connection to the computer from which the applet was sent. Also See: HTML , Java

Archive - A file that contains a group of files which have been compressed for efficient storage. You have to use an archive program to get the original files back out. Commonly used programs include compress, tar, cpio, and zip (on UNIX systems), PKZIP (on DOS systems) and WinZIP on Windows based systems. Also See: Zip, WinZip

ARPANET - A computer network started in 1969 (the original ancestor of the Internet) and funded by the U.S. Department of Defence; it was dismantled several years ago. Article - A posting to a newsgroup. That is, a message someone sends to the newsgroup to be readable by everyone who reads the newsgroup.

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 codes each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number: 0000000 through 1111111.

Auto Responder - This feature allows you to set up a document that is automatically emailed to a user who requests information by emailing a selected email address. Commonly used for price lists, additional information, and FAQs.

Automatic Mailing List - A mailing list maintained by a computer program, usually one named LISTSERV or Majordomo. Also See: Mailing List, Spam