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ASCII - (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange) -- This is the de facto world-wide standard for the code numbers used by
computers to represent all the upper and lower-case Latin letters, numbers, punctuation,
etc. There are 128 standard ASCII codes each of which can be represented by a 7 digit
binary number: 0000000 through 1111111.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
ETHERNET - A very common method of networking computers in a
LAN. Ethernet will handle about 10,000,000 bits-per-second and can be used with almost any
kind of computer.
FIRE WALL - A combination of hardware and software that
separates a LAN into two or more parts for security purposes.
FTP - (File Transfer Protocol) -- A very common method
of moving files between two Internet sites. FTP is a special way to login to another
Internet site for the purposes of retrieving and/or sending files. There are many Internet
sites that have established publicly accessible repositories of material that can be
obtained using FTP, by logging in using the account name anonymous, thus these sites are
called anonymous ftp servers. |
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