World Wide Webfx Internet Glossary of Computer Terms

Glossary of Computer Terms
from World Wide Webfx

page: See Web Page.
parity: an extra bit added to a byte or word to reveal errors in a transmission.
password: a sequence of alphanumeric characters that, when coupled with a userid provides controlled access to a computer account. It may be either chosen by a user, assigned by a systems administrator,or generated by a key distribution program. Along with a valid login ID, this constitutes the two parts of the authentication process on most systems. See also authorization.
PC: Any Personal Computer, but usually refers to an IBM-compatible microcomputer.
PCNews: a program written by ITC to allow PC users to send and receive USENET news.
PING: See Packet Internet Groper
PIF: program Information File, used by Microsoft Windows programs to store information for a MS/DOS program that is run in Windows.
plaintext: Text that uses only the standard ASCII character set. Also used to describe text that is not encrypted using a security program
plan file: A file on a UNIX system that can be read by users on- and off-system using the finger program (if the systems administrator has set up the system to allow it). It has the filename.plan and usually contains some information you want people to know about you, such as your name, preferred e-mail address, and business phone. Plan files may also include information about the user's interests. Some systems administrators do not permit remote fingering of plan files for security or privacy reasons.
Point of Presence (POP): A site where there exists a collection of telecommunications equipment, usually digital leased lines and multi-protocol routers to physically connect users to the Internet. Many network providers have their equipment located along with telephone company POPs.
Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP): IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) standard which provides a method for transmitting packets over serial point-to-point links. PPP is the successor protocol to SLIP and like SLIP allows dialup users to connect their home computers to the Internet as peer hosts. Like SLIP, PPP establishes the initial connection between your computer and your service provider's host system, but includes a more robust set of protocols than SLIP. PPP is more efficient than SLIP when using a high-speed modem (14.4 kbps or higher). PPP can also be more difficult to configure than SLIP. (See also SLIP, Service Provider, TCP/IP, Serial Line IP)
POP: See Post Office Protocol and Point of Presence.
port: Although your computer has a physical port in the back into which you plug things, TCP/IP ports are also values defined in the protocol. For example, most computers which accept Telnet sessions create a port "23" to accept Telnet transmissions. When a packet comes in with the Telnet request, it carries a request for port 23. Each application has a unique port number associated with it. See also Transmission Control Protocol.
Post Office Protocol (POP): A protocol designed to allow single-user hosts to read mail from a server. There are three versions: POP, POP2, and POP3. Later versions are not compatible with earlier versions. See also e-mail.
Postal Telegraph and Telephone (PTT): Outside the U.S., PTT refers to a telephone service provider (usually a monopoly) in a particular country.
postmaster: The person responsible for taking care of e-mail problems, answering queries about users, and other.related work at an e-mail server site. By agreement between sites, codified in the RFC's for e-mail, any site that has email connectivity must have a human being who answers mail addressed to postmaster@host. Many postmasters are also handling security questions and systems ethics questions. See also e-mail.
postscript: a file format which is a programming language with powerful graphics primitives for describing printed pages.
PowerPC: RISC microprocessor developed by a consortium of IBM, Apple and Motorola (sometimes refers to the Power Macintosh, the first commercially available micro computer using this chip).
PPP: See Point-to-Point Protocol.
print queue: a method of managing requests to print from a variety of computers to one printer.
printer: Hardware component that produces "hard copy" output.
Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM): Internet e-mail that provides confidentiality, authentication, and message integrity using various encryption methods.See also e-mail.
processing: Computer instructions executed to transform inputted data (word processing, sorting, calculating) into useable information.
program: a set of instructions or steps that tells the computer how to perform a task.
programming language: a notation providing a means of writing computer source programs, which has syntax (the rules for forming grammatically correct statements in the language) and semantics (the rules for determining the meanings of the statement s) e.g., Basic, C, Cobol, Fortran, Pascal.
protocol: A formal description of message formats and the rules two or morecomputers must follow to exchange those messages. Protocols can describe lowlevel details of computer-to-computer interfaces (for example, the order in which the bits from a byte are sent across a wire), or high- level exchanges between application programs (for example, the way in which two programs transfer a file across the Internet).
provider: See Service Provider.