| Word or
Term |
Description
or Explanation |
| Name Server |
see Domain name |
| Net |
another name for the Internet |
| Net. |
a way of referring to a person on the net,
e.g.
Net.god - one who has been online since the beginning, who
knows all and who has done it all;
Net.personality - somebody
sufficiently opinionated/flaky/with plenty of time on his hands to regularly
post in dozens of different Usenet newsgroups, whose presence is known to
thousands of people;
Net.police - derogatory term for those who
would impose their standards on other users of the Net - often used in vigorous
flame wars (in which it occasionally mutates to net.nazis) |
| Netiquette |
the "rules" of the Internet - when you first
get connected to the Internet don't immediately leap in and start posting
messages, wait a few weeks (at least) to get the feel of the place and the
people:
don't use all capital letters because it will be read
as SHOUTING
don't post a mailshot to users without their permission
don't post methods of 'getting rich quick'
don't post confidential
information
don't ask FAQs (ask instead where to find the group's FAQ)
don't use very long signatures (it costs people to load them)
don't quote
large amounts of other people's messages (as this is also a waste of time and
money) |
| NetNews |
aka News - news transferred using the NNTP
protocol |
| Netscape |
a World Wide Web browser program - currently
(late 1995) the most used browser on the Web - its attractions include its
cross-platform support (the program is available for PCs, Macs and a number of
different types of Unix workstation), and its speed (it shows you the text and
graphics of a Web page as they arrive at your computer, rather than waiting for
the whole page to be downloaded) - it is free to educational establishments and
charities, and can be downloaded free for evaluation by others - one problem is
that Netscape introduces various non-standard 'extensions' to the Web authoring
language, HTML, which are not supported by other browsers - Acorn users of the
Internet are most likely to encounter the influence of Netscape in the form of
oddly laid out or unreadable Web pages, possibly bearing messages such as "this
page looks best in Netscape" or "the page only works with Netscape" - the
latest version (v2.0) also supports JAVA |
| Network |
a means of connecting a number of computers
together so that they can share data and the use of peripherals - there a
number of types LAN and WAN - if you connect two computers together you get a
network - if you connect 10 computers together you get a network - if you
connect 10 networks together you get a network - if you connect 10 million
networks you get a network, only this one is called the Internet |
| Network computer |
one particular implementation of a thin
client (q.v.) - it is intended to be a computer which uses the Internet (or a
local network) to connect to the systems where all of its applications software
is kept |
| Newbie |
a new user of the Internet or of a particular
service - this is not a pejorative term |
| News |
often referred to as the Usenet News Groups -
discussion areas where anyone can post messages for others to read and reply to
- there are over 10,000 newsgroups for discussion on just about any subject
area - the Newsbase setup window lets you decide which groups you want to
join/subscribe to, i.e. which ones it should fetch |
| News server |
machines to which you connect to send and
receive news |
| NewsFeed |
aka News server |
| Newsgroup |
a forum for discussing a subject, the title
of the newsgroup (hopefully) giving the subject area - you can start a new
discussion, known as a thread, or reply to existing postings - see also
News |
| Newsreader |
a program that allows you access to articles
on a Usenet server |
| NFS |
Network File System - a protocol developed by
Sun and defined in RFC 1094 which allows a computer to access files over a
network as if they were on its local disc |
| Nibble |
four binary bits, i.e. two nibbles make a
byte |
| NIC |
Network Information Center - as close as an
Internet-style network gets to a hub - it's usually where you'll find
information about that particular network |
| NFS |
Network Filing System - Acorn's filing system
for use on networks |
| NLQ |
Near Letter Quality - amiddle range printing
standard |
| NNTP |
Network News Transfer Protocol - the
application protocol (defined in RFC 997) used to transfer Usenet articles
between news servers |
| Node |
a computer or server attached to the
network |
| NSA line eater |
the more aware/paranoid Net users believe
that the National Security Agency has a super-powerful computer assigned to
reading everything posted on the Net - they will jokingly (?) refer to this
line eater in their postings |
| NSF |
National Science Foundation - this funds the
NSFNet, the backbone of the Internet in the US |
| NTP |
Network Time Protocol - a protocol that
ensures accurate local timekeeping with reference to radio and atomic clocks
located on the Internet - this protocol is capable of synchronising distributed
clocks within milliseconds over long time periods (see RFC 1305, previously RFC
1119) |