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 Packet: A unit of data
sent across a network.
Pine: A UNIX-based,
menu-driven E-mail program. Initially, Pine offered a limited set of
functions geared toward the novice user. Recent versions include optional
power-user and personal-preference features.
Plan
File: A plan file resides on a server and contains personal information
about you that can be accessed by others on the Internet. What you put in
your plan file is entirely your decision, and can be any length.
Plug-in: Bits of code
that add themselves to the WWW browser, adding functionality to the browser
without opening another application.
Point
of Presence: A point of presence is a location which provides a
collection of telecommunications equipment including multi-protocol routers,
digital leased lines, or modems and telephone lines. The point of presence is
then, in turn, connected to the Internet. Internet service providers contract
the use of this equipment to individual users, and corporations to allow them
to connect to the Internet.
Point-to-Point
Protocol (PPP): The Point-to-Point Protocol, provides a method for
transmitting packets over modem connections to the Internet. It is similar to
SLIP but is slightly faster and more stable.
Post Office Protocol (POP):
A program that resides on the server where your mail account is located. It
sends and receives mail and may transfer mail between the server and your
computer. There are different versions of POP, not all of which are
compatible.
Post:
To send a message to a mailing list or Newsgroups.
Prodigy: An online
service that supports a wide array of consumer-oriented services. As of
January 1995, Prodigy boasted over 2 million subscribers. Jointly owned by
IBM and Sears Financial Network, headquartered in White Plains, New York.
Protocol:
The rules that computers must follow to exchange information between each
other.
Public
Key Cryptography: An encryption scheme, introduced by Diffie and
Hellman in 1976, where each person gets a pair of keys, called the public key
and the private key. Each person's public key is published while the private
key is kept secret. Messages are encrypted using the intended recipient's
public key and can only be decrypted using his private key. The need for
sender and receiver to share secret information (keys) via some secure
channel is eliminated: all communications involve only public keys, and no
private key is ever transmitted or shared. Public-key cryptography can be
used for authentication (digital signatures) as well as for privacy
(encryption).
Query:
A keyword search of a database that is generated by a search engine.
Resolver:
A computer that is used to translate between host names and Internet
addresses.
Returns:
The results of a search that are displayed on the screen of a Web browser.
Robots,
Wanderers, Crawlers, Spiders: Robots, wanderers, and spiders are
mechanisms that search the Web at various time increments, often daily or
weekly. They examine and index the contents of a Web page by searching the
source code of the HTML document, then follow the links on that Web page to
other pages, indexing the links found on those Web pages and repeating this
entire procedure as they again follow the new links they've found to yet more
Web pages, indexing data and following links at an exponential rate.
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