Computer Industry Glossary of Terms
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Computer Industry Glossary of TermsIf you disagree with the definitions, discover errors, omissions or have suggestions then please drop me a line . Mike Wardley, SWEO 802 Stands for the year (1980) and month (Feb) when the IEEE formed a committee to establish standards for LANs. (Pretty much driven by Xerox (Bob Metcalfe) mainly with Intel and DEC. 802.12 100VG Standardized in IEEE 802.12 100 Mbps fast Ethernet/Token 802.3 CSMA/CD Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Carrier Detection (Ethernet) 802.4 ARCNET Network Data Link layer protocol 802.5 Token-ring at 4 or 16Mb/s ACE Advanced Computing Environment AT&T/NCR, Mips, NEC, Olivettie, Pyramid, Siemens, Sony, Tandem, UI & USL ADSP AppleTalk Data Stream Protocol Network Session Layer AFP AppleTalk Filing Protocol Network Presentation layer AIX Advanced Interactive Executive IBM OfficeVision offering ANDF Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format OSF deliverable, promised for "general avail in 1993" but has been put off apparently in favor of pushing up the DME schedule. No new date has been announced, but one is likely by May '93. USL has jumped ahead an may eclipse OSF in releasing V.4.2 in ANDF. Would allow software developers to port their applications across platforms without using an application binary interface (ABI) which required recompiling as an intermediate step in porting. ANI Automatic Number Identification ANSI American National Standards Institute APPC Advanced Prog-to-Prog Communication IBM protocol i.e. LU6.2 ARP Address Resolution Protocol Used primarily with IP - Network Layer. ASDS ACCUNET Spectrum of Digital Services - most popular fractional T-1 carrier offered by AT&T. Features analog multi-point service; digital multi-point service; end-to-end, 9.6Kbps digital services; ASICs Application-Specific Integrated Circuits ASLIP Asynchronous Serial Line Interface Protocol ASLIP, abbreviated SLIP ASN.1 Abstract Syntax Notation 1 OSI presentation layer protocol - ISO standard for encoding information at the presentation layer. Similar to Sun's XDR or Apollo's NIDL, but more general. Useful for describing structures in machine-independent fashion and can accommodate differences in word size, character sets, and arithmetic functions. SNMP is written in terms of ASN.1. ASP AppleTalk Session Protocol Network Session layer ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode A fast, intelligent hardware switch which can support voice, data, image, and video. Cell-switching (as opposed to packet) technology which replaces variable-length packets now in use with uniform (53 byte) cells. It promises any-to-any connectivity and networks that scale easily from a few nodes to global deployment. Combines packet switching's efficient use of bandwidth with circuit switching's minimal delays. ATP AppleTalk Transaction Protocol Network Transport Layer BAPI Bridge Application Prog Interface B-ISDN Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network BSI British Standards Institute CCITT Consult. Comt. for Te-phony and Te-graphy The CCITT acronym is from the French title.) An arm of the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations agency. CERN European Laboratory for Particle Physics, Geneva, Switzerland and birthplace of the World-Wide Web CIB Common Information Base OSI MIB CICS Customer Information &Control System IBM, industry leader in on-line transaction-processing (OLTP) applications and is used by more than 20,000 customers and 36,000 licensees in more than 90 countries. It is currently available only on IBM platforms, but HP entered an agreement to have it on PA-RISC by "second half of 1993". CISC Complex Instruction Set Computer Well over 100 Instructions (350+) CORBA Common ORB Environment Final OMG ORB release spec. Defines an architecture for communicating between objects on different platforms. CMC Common Messaging Calls CPCS Carrier Personal Communications Systems For use outside buildings for wireless communications. Also see U[ser]CPS CP/M Control Prog/Monitor Operating System created by Gary Kildall in the 70's. (Gary died at age 52 on 7/13/94.) CSU Channel Service Unit Connects an in-house line to an external digital circuit. It provides no multiplexing, so you cannot simultaneously have both voice and data transmission over the same line. DAA Distributed Application Architecture Defines an OMG compliant object oriented environment. DARPA Dept. of Def. Adv. Research Proj. Agency TCP/IP protocol suite begins when contract is initiated in 1969. DCE Distributed Computing Environment OSF deliverable - Designed to address distributed computing such as interoperability in multivendor networks and application portability. DDP Datagram Delivery Protocol AppleTalk Network Layer DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol RFC 1541 Internet standard for the automatic allocation of IP addresses. DLC Data Link Control DME Distributed Management Environment This does for networked system management what DCE does for networked applications. HP has submitted OpenView in cahoots with IBM and others for this. DNIS Dialed Number Identification Service DOMF Distributed Object Management Facility HP/SUN ORB. Underlying foundation of our DAA. DPA Demand Protocol Architecture HP/3Com protocol to load/unload protocols off the stack DRDA Distributed. Relational DB Architecture IBM DSU Data Service Unit Connects an in-house line to an external digital circuit. It provides no mulitplexing, so you cannot simultaneously have both voice and data transmission over the same line. DUA EES Escrowed Encryption Standard Uses the Skipjack algorithm and includes the Clipper and Capstone microchips (and Tessera card). A Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) designed by the National Security Agency, and approved, despite a stunningly high percentage anti-EES public comments on the proposal) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Since the very day of the announcement of Clipper in 1993, public outcry against the key "escrow" system has been strong, unwavering and growing rapidly. EtherTalk Ethernet for Macintoshes ESDI Enhanced Small-Device Interface Managed by the CPU transfer rates of 10-, 15-, or 24Mbps one controller can handle two drives serial interface through which data/commands must pass generally up to about 2BG of capacity. FTP File Transfer Protocol TCP/IP Application/Presentation layer Government OSI Open Systems Interconnection Profile required for OSI products sold to the U.S. Government GSM Global System for Mobile Messaging HTML HyperText Markup Language Document format standard used by the internet and eventually everything probably. HTTP HyperText Transport Protocol NCSA Mosaic related - HTTP servers are commonly used for serving hypertext documents, as HTTP is an extremely low-overhead protocol that capitalizes on the fact that navigation information can be embedded in such documents directly and thus the protocol itself doesn't have to support full navigation features like the FTP and Gopher protocols do. ICMP Internet Control Message Protocol TCP/IP Network Layer IDE Integrated Drive Electronics 16-bit parallel interface transferring only data. Cheaper than ESDI medium-range capacity (40-200Mb). Can't perform a physical (low-level) format because it is not a device-level interface. IDE ATA Connects only hard disks. IDE SCSI Connects other peripherals as well. IDP Internetwork Datagram Protocol 3-Open Network Layer IEC Inter-Exchange Carrier (AT&T, MCI, Sprint) IETF Internet Engineering Task Force IMAP Internet Mail Access Protocol RFC 1730[-33] IMAP4 allows a client to access and manipulate electronic mail messages on a server. This should be viewed as a superset of the POP3. The IMAP4 server listens on TCP port 143. IMAP is definitely an emerging technology and functionally completely out performs the older POP environment. IMSP Internet Message Support Protocol IP Internet Protocol TCP/IP - Network Layer IPX Internetwork Packet eXchange Novell - Network Layer ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network ISO International Organization for Standardization A federation of national standards bodies such as BSI & ANSI. JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group The original name of the committee that wrote the standard. Stores full color information: 24 bits/pixel (16 million colors). GIF, the other image format widely used on Usenet, can only store 8 bits/pixel (256 or fewer colors). JPEG is designed for compressing either full-color or gray-scale images of natural, real-world scenes. It works well on photographs, naturalistic artwork, and similar material; not so well on lettering, simple cartoons, or line drawings. JPEG handles only still images, but there is a related standard called MPEG for motion pictures. JPEG is "lossy," meaning that the decompressed image isn't quite the same as the one you started with. (There are lossless image compression algorithms, but JPEG achieves much greater compression than is possible with lossless methods.) JPEG is designed to exploit known limitations of the human eye, notably the fact that small color details aren't perceived as well as small details of light-and-dark. Thus, JPEG is intended for compressing images that will be looked at by humans. If you plan to machine-analyze your images, the small errors introduced by JPEG may be a problem for you, even if they are invisible to the eye. LADDR Layered Device Driver Architecture SCSI interface spec to OS/2 available with OS/2 1.3 (but not IBM OS/2 1.3) LCS Lotus Communication Server "enterprise-wide mail backbone for Notes and cc:Mail users." Sometimes pronounced "Lex". LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol A technology that provides DUAs (X.500) for PCs. LDAP combines a TCP/IP based DUA with an OSI server to allow access to the DSA. Because of the high overhead of OSI service, a full DUA implementation is difficult for the PC platform. LMDS Local Multi-point Distribution Service Digital wireless, two-way broadband technology. MACH Carnegie-Mellon version of UNIX specifically designed for massively parallel systems MADMAN MIB - "Mail and Directory Management || Management Information Base" - is a technology for gathering information over a network. MAE Macintosh Application Environment A software implementation of Macintosh that runs in an X window on the Series 700 workstations. With it, users will be able to run many Macintosh applications without modification. MAE integrates Macintosh and UNIX* system-based environments, allowing users to directly manipulate the UNIX file system from the Macintosh interface, as well as cut and paste both text and graphics between X and Macintosh applications. The MAE architecture also supports workstation devices as well, allowing access to Macintosh-formatted floppies and CD-ROMs from existing workstation drives. MAE runs on HP-UX 9.01 or later and requires an X11 release 4 or later window display driver. MAPI Messaging Application Prog. Interface MHS Message Handling System. X.400 series of recommendations of abstract services and protocols used to provide electronic mail services in an OSI networking environment. X.500 is a series of recommendations that provide a distributed, user-friendly subscriber directory to help users address X.400 messages. These services are called simply the Directory. CCITT calls it X.400 - ISO calls it MHS, but they are identical in substance. CCITT calls it X.500 - ISO calls it Directory. MHS Message Handling Service Novell - now supports MS-Mail for Windows MIB Management Information Base - SNMP requests these values a conceptual database of values on the agent. OSI CIB will eventually replace these. MIME Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions Enables multi-part/multimedia messages to be sent over the Internet. This standard was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the same people who have fostered many of the slickest new technologies in recent years (SNMP, TCP/IP add-ons). The standard was completed in January of 1991 and as of august 1992 it is an IETF proposed standard. One of the primary authors is Nathaniel Borenstein of Bellcore in Morristown, New Jersey. MISF Microsoft Internet Security Framework MNP Microcom Network Protocol Public domain error correction/compression technique used in modems. de facto standard. CCITT official error correction/compression protocol is LAP-M and V.42vis. SEE V.42 and LAP-M. V.42 is a CCITT standard which includes MNP 3 & 4 as well as LAP-M. MNP 2 character (byte) oriented protocol Where complete asynchronous chars are transmitted along with the protocol overhead. 84% throughput. Few modems were ever sold with this h/w based protocol (though it has been used in s/w based applications). MNP 3 bit oriented Where asynchronous chars are converted to a sync data stream (stripping framing bits). 108% throughput. MNP 4 Nearly identical to Class 3 but with slightly more throughput. Flexible block size permit larger blocks during times of lower error activity. Efficiency can be up to about 120%. MNP 5 Includes features of 3 & 4 (required) and also uses data compression techniques to increase throughput. Depending on the type of data, throughput can be up to 200%. MRP Manufacturing Resource Planning MSDS Materials Safety Data Sheet MTA Message Transfer Agents Part of the X.400 OSI stack. Responsible for the actual transport of the message between user agents. MTA's typically reside on separate machines. MTS Message Transfer System Part of the OSI stack. User Agents help compose messages and submits them to the MTS. UA also retrieves new messages from the MTS. MVS Multiple Virtual Storage IBM operating system for 370 architecture. NBP NetBIOS Protocol NCP NetWare Core Protocol Presentation layer. NCS Remote Procedure Call technology developed at Apollo. It was submitted to the OSF and accepted as part of the OSF DCE NDIS Network Device Interface Specification Microsoft/3Com API specifically to provide a common sharable device interface for LAN Manager. A number of other protocol stacks can use NDIS, including most commercial TCP/IP packages and Banyon VINES. Also supported for LM, TCP/IP, Novell, DECnet protocols. Novell doesn't currently support the API. Runs on both OS/2 and DOS. Can support as many protocol stacks over an interface as memory can allow. NetBIOS Network Basic Input/Output System Developed by IBM and Sytek LM - Presentation/Session 3+ - Session NetBEUI NetBIOS Extended User Interface IBM developed in 1985 when it was assumed that LANs would be segmented into workgroups of 20 to 200 computers and that gateways would be used to connect on LAN segment to other LAN segments or to a mainframe. NetBEUI is optimized for high performance when used in departmental LANs. Non-routable protocol that cannot cross routers, although it can cross bridges and source routing bridges. NetIPC Network Inter Process Communication A transport interface to the TCP/UPD/IP network protocol stack. (HP NS services) NetRPC Remote Procedure Call Vines – Presentation. NFS Network File System Distributed file system from SUN NGM NetWare Global Messaging Novell's server based messaging engine. Set of NetWare NLMs providing a central hub, directory synch. MHS first, then X.400, SMTP and SNADS later. B-trieve based. Eventually MS's MAPI and Apple's OCE and the multi-company VIM messaging interfaces. NNTP Network News Transfer Protocol NS Network Services HP proprietary networking services including VT3K, NFT (DSCOPY), NetIPC NT New Technology Microsoft's 32-bit, pre-emptive multitasking kernel ODBC Open Database Connectivity Microsoft API OL Open Look Sun's GUI OLTP on-line transaction-processing OMG Object Management Group A consortium of companies promoting standards for Object management. Located in Framingham, Mass. ONC SUN RPC mechanism. ORB Object Request Broker An OMG release (specification) OSF Open Software Foundation Based in Cambridge, MA - Delivered OSF/1 in 1991. Consortium of "members" (DEC, HP). Released DCE in Sep/91, DME to follow and then ANDF (Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format) OSI Open Systems Interconnection P1 Message Transfer Protocol X.400, used in communications between two MTA's P2 Interpersonal Messaging Protocol X.400, defines the content format of an interpersonal message. Enhanced in the 1988 recommendations and now known as P22. P3 Submission and Delivery Protocol X.400, is used in communications between a UA or MS and an MTA. P7 Indirect Submission and Retrieval Protocol Used in communications between a UA and the MS. The P7 Client Interface provides client access to OpenMail over an OSI network. Remote User Agents (clients) written to the P7 protocol (define in X.413 of the 1988 X.400 recommendations) can submit messages to and retrieve messages from the OpenMail message store. The OpenMail message store acts as a NIST and GOSIP conformant enhanced message store. In addition, it provides support for the General Text body part and limited support for the registration of the auto-forward auto-action. PAD Packet Assemble/Disassembler X.25 connection device PAL Privileged Architecture Library Dec Alpha chip feature which enables non VMS OSs to run on the chip. Will allow NT to run on Alpha chip (after Intel and MIPS). PCMCIA Personal Computer Memory Card International Association PCSA Personal Computing Systems Architecture DEC's PC network offerings PEP Packet Exchange Protocol 3+ Transport PERL Practical Extraction and Report Language Or Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister PEX 3D Extension to X endorsed by X Consortium. PEX is the protocol that carries information across the network. PEXlib is the 3D library used by application developers. "cose" participants support PEX. POAT Plain Old ASCII Text POP Post Office Protocol RFC 1225 (POP3 - RFC 1725) (Public Domain protocol to read unix environment sendmail type messages?). A simple protocol for client access to a remote message store. It allows a client to sign on, list the in-box, read mail from the in-box and delete mail from the in-box. Public domain POP viewers will run on HP-UX. POTS Plain Old Telephone Service PPP PowerPC PPCP Architecture: Technical partnership of Apple, IBM and Motorola which created a new chip. PRO Precision RISC Organization 9 global computer-tech manufacturers to advance and broaden the use of PA-RISC. Hitachi, Oki, Mitsubishi Prime, Convex, Hughes Aircraft, QIC Quarter-Inch Cartridge RAID Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks RAID1, Mirroring of single drives or sets RAID3,4,5, High-level schemes RBOC Regional Bell Operating Company Pac Bell, U.W. West, Nynex RDA Remote Database Access RFC821 Simple Message Transport Protocol Aug, 1982. Defined a 7-bit transport. 8-bit is technically a violation of 821. RFC 822 Standard for Internet Text Messages RFC1425 Extended SMTP (ESMTP), defined in February 1993 later revised in RFC 1651 in July 1994 RFC1521 MIME encoding RFC1651 ESMTP revised definition - July 1994 - The initial extension, known as 8BITMIME (defined in RFC 1652), allows mail transfer agents (MTAs) to negotiate the transfer of 8-bit data. If a given MTA has an 8-bit message and fails to negotiate an 8BITMIME transfer with a subsequent MTA, RFC 1652 requires that the message be encoded via MIME (defined in RFC 1521), RFC1652 SMTP Service Extension for 8bit-MIME transport RIP Routing Information Protocol TCP/IP - Network RISC Reduced Instruction Set Computer 30-100 Instructions (HP PA = 140 - SPARC = 94). Simple instructions allow elimination of microcode. RPC Remote Procedure Call RTMP Routing Table Maintenance Protocol AppleTalk - Transport/Network RTP Routing Update Protocol Vines - Transport SAA Systems Application Architecture IBM Architecture SCSI Small Computer Standard Interface A more general version of IDE. Standard SCSI, SCSI, SCSI-2, SE-SCSI, 5MB/s, 8 bit data bus width, 50 pins, 6 meter cable. HP Single-ended disks will actually run at 10MB/s, but the SCSI-2 bus standard restricts operation to 5MB/s Differential SCSI - Fast, Fast/Narrow, Diff-SCSI 10MBytes/s, 8 bits, 50 pin, 25 meters Fast/Wide SCSI - differential-Wide, F/W-SCSI, Fast and Wide - 20 MBytes/s, 16 bits, 68 pin, 25 meters SGML Structured General Markup Language SLIP Serial Line Interface Protocol ASLIP, abbreviated SLIP S-MAPI Secure MAPI Secure version of Microsoft’s MAPI Protocol SMB Server Message Block 3+, Vines - Presentation SMDS Switched Multimegabit Data Service U.S. Bellcore standard offering high-speed data connection) S-MIME Secure version of MIME. S/MIME Secure version of MIME. SMIME Secure version of MIME. SMP Symmetric MultiProcessing SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol TCP/IP Application/Presentation, A protocol used for transmitting messages through the ARPA Internet and local area networks. sendmail improvements for both an SMTP receiving agent and an SMTP delivery agent. RFC 821 is the specification for SMTP. SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol SONET/SDH Synchronous Optical Network/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy SPARC Scalable Processor Architecture Sun RISC Architecture - Largely a derivative of RISC-II architecture 1982 - U-of-Cal Berkley SPEC Standard Performance Evaluation Corp As in SPECint, SPECweb. SPP Sequenced Packet Protocol Vines - Session SPX Sequenced Packet eXchange Novell - uses IPX as a delivery mechanism, Novell - Session/Transport SQE Signal Quality Error “Heartbeat" or "Collision Presence Signal test. developed to test the collision-detection circuit within a transceiver as it operates between that device and a controller. Used for the Collision detection part of the 802.3 spec. SQL Structured Query Language SRPI Server/Requestor Programming Interface SSL Secure Sockets Layer Internet Security T1 1.544 Mb/s 24 64Kb Channels - ISDN uses 1 channel for D-channel (which provides *all* signaling). A 56Kb line is essentially a 64Kb line with 8Kb of signaling bandwidth T3 44.184 Mb/s TCP Transmission Control Protocol TCP/IP, Vines - Transport TIITP Telnet Internet Interactive terminal protocol TCP/IP - App/Presentation UA User Agent ALL-IN-1, OfficeVision, Wang OFFICE, and HP DeskManager are all examples of user agents. UAL User Agent Layer HP’s client server protocol/interface for messaging. UDP User Datagram Protocol TCP/IP, Vines - Transport - connectionless protocol - eliminates the overhead of a TCP connection. UI Unix International UNC Universal Naming Convention Allows OS/2 workstation to access LM and Netware at the same time. UPCS User Personal Communications Systems Used locally, inside buildings, for wireless communications (also see C[arrier]PCS) URL Uniform Resource Locator NCSA Mosaic - Think of it as a networked extension of the standard filename concept: not only can you point to a file in a directory, but that file and that directory can exist on any machine on the network, can be served via any of several different methods, and might not even be something as simple as a file: URLs can also point to queries, documents stored deep within databases, the results of a finger or archie command, or whatever. USL Unix System Laboratories UUCP Unix to Unix Copy A simple store and forward transport protocol with facilities for copying files to remote Unix systems and executing selected commands on the remote system. V.42 CCITT error correction standard which encompasses both choices of MNP 3 & 4 or LAP-M error correction. V.42bis CCITT data compression standard providing up to 4-1 compression. Requires LAP-M error correction (V.42 bis is built on LAP-M). VIM Vendor Independent Messaging protocol Lotus messaging client/server protocol, primarily for cc:Mail. VIP Vines Internet Protocol Network layer. VIPC Vines Interprocess Communications Protocol Transport layer. VUE Visual User Environment WABI Windows Application Binary Interface A Sun offering ,originally obtained by SunSelect's purchase of Praxis) enables users of Unix systems to run Microsoft Corp's Windows 3.1 applications quickly and without modification just by opening a window on the Unix desktop. WAIS Wide Area Information System Mosaic Project headed by Brewster Kahle (of Thinking Machines). WAIS information is part of the WorldWideWeb (W3) by virtue of a gateway . WINS Windows Internet Naming Service DNS for Windows Domains WOSA Windows Open Services Architecture. A Definition for how non-MS products (like NetWare) link to NT. Allows third parties to add, for example, messaging, security, file, and print services to the new operating system. WWW WorldWideWeb Is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge. It is an initiative started at CERN, now with many participants. It has a body of software, and a set of protocols and conventions. W3 uses hypertext and multimedia techniques to make the web easy for anyone to roam browse, and contribute to. XAPI XNS Xerox Networking Services IPX and SPX are based on XNS Transport/Network ZIP Zone Information Protocol Appletalk session layer. Note: My thanks to Dave Orth, EBSO for help with the information shown above. Download 55.93 Kb. Share with your friends:
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