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The basic set of networking terms. Network An interconnected set of computers, relays and peripherals. Server (delivers) A computer whose main role is to act as a central location for storing information and delivers that information to other computers who request it. Client (requests) A computer that requests information from another machine. Ethernet The local networking language that computers use to talk to each other. Internet (1960s) The network of interconnected networks. The internet has different networks such as HTTP (web), FTP (file transfer), SMTP/POP (email), NNTP (Network News Transport Protocol) as well as others. WWW (1990s) The part of the internet that uses the HTTP protocol and the HTML language to share information. It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee while he worked at the Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaire in Zurich Switzerland between 1989 and 1993. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) The main protocol used to send electronic mail from server to server on the Internet. Post Office Protocol The main protocol used to retrieve electronic mail from the email server on the Internet. Another protocol called IMAP is replacing POP for email. 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 the messages stored on the server, without having to actually download the messages. Messages can be deleted, have their status changed, multiple mail boxes can be managed, etc. Firewall A device that filters information passing from a network to another network or computer. Proxy (instead of…) A server computer in between the client and the main server whose role is to lighten the load on the main server. It can also perform firewall duties as well. Ping A command to check to see if a particular server is online. Traceroute A command that displays all the devices and their IP addresses in between the client and the server. IP address (Static/dynamic) An Internet Protocol address. A static address is one that is permanently given to a specific computer. A dynamic one is given to a computer on an as-is-needed basis and will change after the computer shuts down and comes back online again. TCP/IP The Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol. This is the standard networking language that all operating systems now use. It is the basis of the Internet. DNS (domain name server) A DNS server is responsible for changing names (such as www.google.com to IP addresses (such as 192.168.1.100). URL A Uniform Resource Locator or web address. Its parts are: the protocol to use to communicate with, the host (server) to communicate with, and the path to the resource on the server (for example, the file name). Hub (dumb) A signal splitter that provides an economical way to add nodes to a network. Its disadvantage is that it has no presence on the network per se. For example, two computers plugged into a hub to share a cable modem would each need an IP address from the ISP. Router/ Switch (smart) A smart network device that provides an interface between networks. Its advantage is that it has a presence on the network. For example, two computers plugged into a router to share a cable modem are given their IP addresses by the router not the ISP. Most routers can handle 255 devices on the LAN side. On the internet side, only the router is visible. ARPANet The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network of the US Department of Defense, was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the global Internet. Developed in the late 60's and early 70's (in reaction to the fears raised by the Russian's launching of the Sputnik satellite in 1957) by the US Department of Defense as an experiment in wide-area-networking to connect together computers that were each running different system so that people at one location could use computing resources from another location. LAN (Local Area Network) A computer network limited to the immediate area, usually the same building or floor of a building. Home networks are considered LANs. WAN Wide Area Network (WAN) is a computer network that covers a broad area (i.e., any network whose communications links cross metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries). The largest and most well-known example of a WAN is the Internet. WANs are used to connect LANs and other networks together, so that users and computers in one location can communicate with users and computers in other locations. Many WANs are built for one particular organization and are private. Others, built by Internet service providers, provide connections from an organization's LAN to the Internet. Intranet A private network inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use. Compare with extranet. Extranet An intranet that is accesible to computers that are not physically part of a company's own private network, but that is not accessible to the general public, for example to allow vendors and business partners to access a company web site. Often an intranet will make use of a Virtual Private Network. (VPN.) VPN (virtual private network) A virtual private network is a communications network tunneled through another network, and dedicated for a specific purpose. For example, a company can create a VPN to allow workers who are on the road to have secure access to the company's private internal network. A VPN however does not necessarily have to be secure to qualify as a VPN. IPv4 (Internet Protocol, version 4) The most widley used version of the Internet Protocol (the "IP" part of TCP/IP.) IPv4 allows for a theoretical maximum of approximately four billion IP Numbers , but the actual number is far less due to inefficiencies in the way blocks of numbers are handled by networks. The gradual adoption of IPv6 will solve this problem. IPv6 (Internet Protocol, version 6) The successor to IPv4. Already deployed in some cases and gradually spreading, IPv6 provides a huge number of available IP Numbers - over a sextillion addresses. IPv6 allows every device on the planet to have its own IP address. ISP -- (Internet Service Provider) An institution that provides access to the Internet in some form, usually for money. In Montreal, Videotron and Bell are the two most common ISPs. Mosaic The first graphical WWW and Gopher network browser that was available for the Macintosh, Windows, and UNIX, invented by Marc Andreessen and his team. Mosaic really started the popularity of the Web. Mosaic evolved into Netscape. Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, in Illinois, USA. The first version was released in late 1993. X11 The X Window System (commonly X11 or X) provides windowing in order to build graphical user interfaces (GUIs) on most Unix-like operating systems. X is not an integral part of the operating system; instead, it is built as an additional application layer on top of the operating system kernel. Unlike Microsoft Windows or the classic Mac OS, X was specifically designed to be used over network connections rather than on an integral or attached display device. X features network transparency: the machine where an application program (the client application) runs can differ from the user's local machine (the display server). X originated at MIT in 1984. The current protocol version, X11, appeared in September 1987. Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard is the first version of the Mac OS to have X built in by default. Virtualization A computing technique where software installed on a workstation or server will impersonate a physical piece of hardware, thereby permitting an operating system to be installed on this 'virtual machine'. For example, a very powerful piece of server hardware can be configured to run Linux as its main operating system but also run Windows Server 2003 simultaneously as a virtual machine. On consumer workstations, particularly on Intel based Macs, its is now common for designers to have Microsoft Windows running as a virtual machine inside Mac OS X. This helps designers do browser testing for example when designing web sites. See VMWare. Packet The basic chunk of information which is transmitted on the internet. It can be compared to an envelope. Each packet has an destination address, a return address and the sequence and number of packets it belongs to. Circuit switching Network model used in the telephone system: network resources in the telephone system are reserved from your phone to the phone you call when you place the call; they're released when you hang up. See packet switching. Packet Switching The type of networking by which most data is exchanged throughout the Internet. Data is broken down in to smaller "packets" prior to transfer, and then reassembled at the destination. This type of network can survive a single point of failure as each packet is sent along the most optimized path to its destination on the network. In other words, network resources are only used during the time it takes to transmit each packet. Apache One of the world's most popular Web server programs, Apache was built by a group of open-source programmers and is often used because of its outstanding performance, strong security features and the fact that it is free. Microsoft IIS Short for Internet Information Server, Microsoft's web server software for Windows NT/2000 and above. IIS is considered the usual alternative to Apache; although other web server software exists. Bandwidth The amount of data that is being received and transmitted at any given moment. FTP Short for File Transfer Protocol, a network within the internet dedicated to exchanging files. HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol, the protocol by which HTML files move across the Internet. Originally invented by Tim Berners-Lee and his team at CERN when they invented the World Wide Web.

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