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QUEUE A waiting area for files, print jobs, messages, or anything else being sent from one computer or device to another.

RFC (Request for Comments). The name of the result and the process for creating a standard on the Internet. A new standard is proposed and published as a "Request For Comments." If the standard is established, the reference number/name for the standard retains the acronym "RFC." For example, the official standard for FTP is RFC 959.

SERVER A computer on a network that answers requests for information, such as Web servers, FTP servers and secure servers. The term server is also used to refer to the software that makes serving information possible. SHTML The file extension for Web pages that contain server side includes (SSIs). SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) The standard Internet protocol for transferring electronic mail messages. SPIDER Also called wanderers or robots (bots), spiders are programs that search the Internet for new, publicly accessible resources such as Web pages and files in public FTP archives. Spiders contribute their discoveries to a database, which Internet users can search by using search engines. SQL (Structured Query Language). The standardized query language for requesting information from a database. SSH A packet-based binary protocol that provides encrypted connections to remote hosts or servers. SSI (Server side includes). A type of HTML comment that directs the Web server to dynamically generate data for the Web page upon request.

TAG A tag is a type of instruction used in HTML that browsers interpret when viewing a Web page. A pair of brackets generally surrounds tags (<>). TAR A file compression format generally found on UNIX platforms. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). A set of protocols that make TELNET, FTP, e-mail, and other services possible among computers that aren't on the same network. TELNET A text-based Internet program used for connecting to a remote host or server. TILDE (or ~) The tilde (~) signifies an individual user's Web site when housed on a server. For example, http://www.webmeusa.net/~user - says that user is a WebMeUSA.net user and that his homepage is on WebmeUSA.net's server. The tilde character is on the top line of your keyboard to the far left.

UNIX An operating system invented in 1969 at AT&T Bell Laboratories that was made available to researchers and students in 1973. It was used to develop the Internet's communication software protocols. UPDATES This represents a small change to a program. Denoted as a change in the right-side digit of a version number (ex: version 3.0 to 3.1). UPGRADES This represents a large change to a program. Denoted as a change in the left-side digit of a version number (ex: version 3.0 to 4.0.). UPLOAD To copy a file from your computer to a remote server, the reverse process of download. USENET An Internet-based bulletin board that allows reading and posting of "news" in various "newsgroups." There are thousands of newsgroups covering a myriad of topics. UUENCODING A method for converting binary information into ASCII text. It can be used for posting to Usenet and or e-mailing with non-MIME compliant mail readers.

VIRUS A program which replicates itself on computer systems by incorporating itself into other programs that are shared among computer systems. Viruses vary, and can be harmless or completely debilitating to a computer system. Many viruses cause computers to operate very slugglishly, and sometimes stop a computer from operating properly, entirely. VRML Virtual Reality Modeling Language. An open, extensible, industry-standard scene description language for 3-D scenes, or worlds, on the Internet. With VRML and certain software tools, you can create and view distributed, interactive 3-D worlds that are rich with text, images, animation, sound, music and video.

WAIS Wide Area Information Server. A client-server information system that let's users search through databases with a single user interface. WAN Wide Area Network. A network that connects computers over a large geographic area. WAREZ Widely used to denote cracked or pirate versions of commercial software. In other words, illegal pirated software. WEB Short for World Wide Web. WEBSITE (or Web Site) The pages that you visit on the internet, when you enter the website domain name (sitename.com, for example) in your browser's domain address area, or when you click on a link from a banner, image or text on a web site page (web page) that takes you to another web site. WHOIS A means of looking up names in a remote database. Used initially as an aid for finding e-mail addresses for people at large institutions or companies. It is often used to describe a look up of who has registered and is using web site domain names. The website domain name look up (whois) results will show who is the registrant, who is the administrator, along with addresses and contact information. There has been some movement in the industry to provide listings that do not show contact information, in an attempt to hamper spammers who might harvest the emails and other information for spamming use. WILDCARD A character string that is used in text searches to make finding a match easier. An asterisk (*) usually means find any character or set of characters. WINDOWS The Microsoft Windows Operating system, which runs on DOS-based PCs. WINSOCK Windows Sockets. A technical specification that defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application (such as an FTP client or a Gopher client) and the underlying TCP/IP protocol stack. The nomenclature is based on the Sockets applications programming interface model used in Berkeley UNIX for communications between programs. WORLD WIDE WEB Created in 1989 at a research institute in Switzerland, the Web relies upon the hypertext transport protocol (http), an Internet standard that specifies how an application can locate and acquire resources stored on another computer on the Internet. Most Web documents are created using hypertext markup language (html), an easy to learn coding system for WWW documents.

XML eXtensible Markup Language. A programming language/specification developed by the W3C. XML is a pared-down version of SGML, designed especially for Web documents. It enables Web authors and designers to create their own customized tags to provide functionality not available with HTML.

ZIP A Microsoft Windows based compressed (archive) file. Can contain one or many files as well as a directory structure. On the Internet, large graphics and programs are usually compressed into ZIP files and then made available for download. After you download this file you need to use a decompression software program to "unzip" the file.

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