Backbone |
A
high-speed line or series of connections that forms a major pathway
within a network. The term is relative as a backbone in a small
network will likely be much smaller than many non-backbone lines
in a large network.
See Also: Network
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| Bandwidth
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How
much stuff you can send through a connection. Usually measured
in bits-per-second. A full page of English text is about 16,000
bits. A fast modem can move about 15,000 bits in one second. Full-motion
full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second,
depending on compression.
See Also: Bps, Bit, T-1
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| Baud |
In
common usage the baud rate of a modem is how many bits it can
send or receive per second. Technically, baud is the number of
times per second that the carrier signal shifts value - for example
a 1200 bit-per-second modem actually runs at 300 baud, but it
moves 4 bits per baud (4 x 300 = 1200 bits per second).
See Also: Bit, Modem
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| BBS |
(Bulletin
Board System) - A computerized meeting and announcement system
that allows people to carry on discussions, upload and download
files, and make announcements without the people being connected
to the computer at the same time. There are many thousands (millions?)
of BBS’s around the world, most are very small, running on a single
IBM clone PC with 1 or 2 phone lines. Some are very large and
the line between a BBS and a system like CompuServe gets crossed
at some point, but it is not clearly drawn.
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| Binhex |
(BINary
HEXadecimal) - A method for converting non-text files (non-ASCII)
into ASCII. This is needed because Internet e-mail can only handle
ASCII.
See Also: ASCII, MIME, UUENCODE
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| Bit |
(Binary
DigIT) - A single digit number in base-2, in other words, either
a 1 or a zero. The smallest unit of computerized data. Bandwidth
is usually measured in bits-per-second.
See Also: Bandwidth, Bps, Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte
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| Bps |
(Bits-Per-Second)
- A measurement of how fast data is moved from one place to another.
A 28.8 modem can move 28,800 bits per second.
See Also: Bandwidth, Bit
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| Browser |
A
Client program (software) that is used to look at various kinds
of Internet resources.
See Also: Client, URL, WWW, Netscape, Mosaic, Home Page (or Homepage)
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| Byte |
A
set of Bits that represent a single character. Usually there are
8 Bits in a Byte, sometimes more, depending on how the measurement
is being made.
See Also: Bit
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