Glossary of Terms

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U

UDP (User Datagram Protocol) - One of the protocols for data transfer that is part of the TCP/IP suite of protocols. UDP is a "stateless" protocol in that UDP makes no provision for acknowledgement of packets received. Also See: TCP/IP

UNIX - An operating system everyone hates. No, an operating system everyone ought to love. No, it's both! It's an operating system that can be confusing to use, but it sure is powerful. Internet users are likely to run into UNIX if they use a shell provider as their Internet provider or when they telnet to UNIX computers.

Upload - To load files onto a computer.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) - Your address on the Internet, (www.yourcompany.com)

Usenet - A system of thousands of distributed bulletin boards called newsgroups. You read the messages by using a program called a newsreader

UUCP - An elderly and creaky (but cheap) mail system still used by many UNIX systems. UUCP stands for UNIX-to-UNIX-copy. UUCP uses mail addresses that contain exclamation points rather than periods between the parts (and they are in reverse order), a method known as bang path addressing. Whenever possible, use regular Internet addresses instead.

Uuencode/Uudecode - Programs that encode files to make them suitable for sending as e-mail. Because e-mail messages must be text, not binary information, uuencode can disguise nontext files as text so that you can include them in a mail message. When the message is received, the recipient can run uudecode to turn it back into the original file.