A protocol used to establish TCP/IP connections using serial lines
such as dial-up telephone lines. Small computers, such as PCs and
Macintoshes, can use SLIP to dial up to servers, which then allow
the computer to act as a full Internet node. SLIP is generally
used at sites with a few users as a cheaper alternative than a
full Internet connection. SLIP is being replaced by PPP at many
sites.
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
TCP/IP is named for two of the major communications protocols used
within the Internet (TCP and IP). These protocols (along with
several others) provide the basic foundation for communications
between hosts in the Internet. All of the service protocols, such
as FTP, Telnet, Gopher, use TCP/IP to transfer information.
Telnet
Telnet is the Internet standard protocol for remote terminal
connection service. The name "telnet" also is used to refer to
programs that allow interactive access to remote computers, as
well as the action of using said programs. For example, the
phrase "Telnet to host xyzzy." means to interactively log into
host "xyzzy" from some other host in the Internet.
Upload
To copy data from a local computer to a remote computer. The
opposite of download.
Usenet News
An electronic bulletin board system created originally by the Unix
community and which is accessible via the Internet. Usenet News
forms a discussion forum accessible by millions of users in almost
every country in the world. Usenet News consists of thousands of
topics arranged in a heirarchical form. Major topics include
"comp" for computer topics, "rec" for recreational topics, "soc"
for social topics, "sci" for science topics, etc. Within the
major topics are subtopics, such as "rec.music.classical" for
classical music, or "sci.med.physics" for discussions relating to
the physics of medical science.
UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy)
This was initially a program run under the UNIX operating system
that allowed one UNIX system to send files to another UNIX system
via dial-up phone lines. Today, the term is more commonly used to
describe the large international network which uses the UUCP
protocol to pass news and electronic mail.
Virus
A program which replicates itself on computer systems by
incorporating itself into other programs which are shared among
computer systems.
WAIS (Wide Area Information Server)
A distributed information service which offers simple natural
language input, indexed searching for fast retrieval, and a
"relevance feedback" mechanism which allows the results of initial
searches to influence future searches. Public domain
implementations are available.
WWW (World Wide Web)
A hypertext-based, distributed information system created by
researchers at CERN in Switzerland. Users may create, edit or
browse hypertext documents. The clients and servers are freely
available. The WWW servers are interconnected to allow a user to
traverse the Web from any starting point; in addition, many other
servers such as WAIS and Gopher have been incorporated into the
WWW servers.