While those who eventually use our products should be
acquainted with the terms we describe here, we are aware that the
person(s) working with the product and those who decide about its
procurement are not necessarily the same. This glossary
is meant as an aid to executives who lack the technical background
but would nevertheless like to assess how our products could benefit
their company or organization.
In case you cannot find a word in this list you may want to refer to the
FOLDOC
online dictionary of computing.
- (Web) Accelerator
-
An accelerator sits in front of the actual web server
daemon and handles incoming connections in a manner that results
in a more efficient processing of the requests.
- Background (program)
-
A program running in background does so unattended and in parallel
to other activities going on in a computer.
Daemons run in background.
- CGI (Common Gateway Interface)
-
Programs invoked by a web server daemon
in order to generate dynamic web content communicate with it
via the CGI standard. The name 'CGI' is often used when actually
a program written to conform to the CGI standard is meant.
- CPU (Central Processing Unit)
-
This is the heart of a computer, where all the data gets piped
through and processed. Hence the frequently used short form
'processor'.
- Daemon
-
A daemon is like a genie in a magic lamp. It is normally invisible,
but when you call it it serves you. In technical terms it is a
computer program lurking in the background,
usually listening on
certain service ports, springing to life when
you contact it there.
The mailer daemon is a good example. The email program on your
computer, for instance MS Outlook, dumps the message you just wrote
onto the daemon (running on a server) which
subsequently takes care of the actual delivery over the Internet.
- Dedicated server
-
A dedicated server is a machine sold or rented
to a customer for
his exclusive use, that is, he does not have to share it with
others. The downside is, however, that, once the customer takes over,
the data center hosting the machine no longer feels responsible for
the software on this machine, that is, the customer has to manage
and maintain it on his own. Exclusive use means exclusive payment.
Since there are no other customers to share the hardware costs with
these machines are relatively expensive if they are of good quality.
- DNS (Domain Name Service)
-
This service converts domain names into IP addresses and vice versa.
The DNS system on the Internet is organized in a hierarchical way.
Computers in need of a translation eventually find the competent
entity by following hints from higher-ranking DNS
servers.
The daemon program that provides this service
learns about the
translation rules by reading in so-called zone files that have to
be set up either manually or by generating them from a database.
- Dynamic (web) content
-
In contrast to preformatted, static web pages, internally stored
in data files deployed just once, dynamic web content is generated
on the fly, with each page access, and in a context sensitive manner.
Sources for the information contained in these pages are databases,
other services on the Internet, results of online calculations etc.,
in short, everything that can change over time. For providing
dynamic content a web server platform is
needed where special programs can run, generating the actual
dynamic content, and which also provides other necessary
gear like an SQL database, a software development environment etc.
- Homepage account
-
Homepage accounts are hosted in a shared environment, usually
thousends of them on each server machine.
As the name indicates, they are web-service-centric, that is,
they are not a general purpose solution. Low budget variants
do not even allow the execution of customer provided
CGI programs,
and you cannot log into these accounts to work online. Premium
homepage accounts permit this but are still riddled with
restrictions due to the shared environment they run in
which shows through everywhere. Advanced features like
SSL
are also not possible because this would require a separate
IP address for each account.
- I/O
-
I/O means Input/Output and appears in a context where data
is received and transmitted.
- IP address
-
IP addresses are the numerical representation of domain names.
'www.escapebox.net', for instance, stands for 213.73.82.23 (can
change over time). Programs talking to each other over the Internet
use these numbers exclusively. So when given a domain name
they first have to ask the DNS service
for a translation to the associated IP address.
Once they have that number, they proceed with
contacting the service they wanted to talk to in the first place.
- MX (Mail eXchanger)
-
Mail exchanger is an entity that takes care of the actual email
delivery process on the Internet. It usually means a mailer
daemon running on a server
machine.
- Port
-
A port in Internet context means a service provided by a
machine connected to the network. Each machine can offer
multiple services. Like an appartment number within a building a
port within a server is designated by a number,
too. And like an appartment can alternatively be referred to by the
name of its inhabitant(s) a port also has a name attached to it.
'HTTP' (web service) corresponds to port #80, 'SMTP' (email transfer)
to port #25, 'IMAP4' (email retrieval) to port #143, and so on.
Daemons listen
on these ports and provide the respective service once contacted.
- RAM (Random Access Memory)
-
This is where all the data a CPU works with gets
temporarily stored,
possibly by fetching part of it from a permanent repository like
a harddisk. Random means that the CPU can
access the memory in any
order, unlike a tape drive that works sequentially.
- Server (daemon)
-
Server is often used as a short form for a daemon
program running on a server machine, that is,
it refers to a software component and not to the actual machine.
- Server (machine)
-
Servers are computers specialized in providing services to
other computers on a network, be it the Internet or a similarly
structured local area network (LAN), also known as Intranet, usually
run within the confines of a company, organization etc. They often
come in special cases mountable in tall server racks located in
data centers and have no keyboard or display attached since they
run unattended.
- SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
-
SSL is a means to encrypt data streams of already existing
Internet protocols like 'HTTP' (web service). They are kind of
wrapped with an additional encryption layer. This usually results
in service names with an 'S' appended, like 'HTTPS'. Today, there
are SSL variants defined for almost all relevant Internet services.
- TLD (Top Level Domain)
-
TLD is a generic name, a placeholder, for the last component of
a domain name, that is, any of 'com', 'net', 'org', 'de', 'uk' etc.
- Webmail
-
Webmail is a program running on a web server
that provides a complete graphical user interface (GUI) for managing
email folders. This way an extra email client program is not
needed. All it takes is a web browser.
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