Web Glossary

Click on any letter below to search for a word starting with that letter in our Web Glossary

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 0-9

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Daemon
A dormant background process on a Web server (in a UNIX environment), waiting to perform tasks. Well-known daemons are the sendmail daemon and the HTTP daemon.

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Data encryption key
String of characters used to encode a message. This encoded message can only be read by someone with another related key.

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Dedicated line
A direct telephone line between two computers.

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DHTML - Dynamic HTML
This is a further development of HTML and not a mark-up language of its own. DMTHL gives improved control over how content is displayed on a web page.

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Dial-up Connection
Temporary connection (over a telephone line) to the computer of your ISP in order to establish a connection to the Internet.The most popular form of Net connection for the home user, this is a connection from your computer to a host computer over standard telephone lines.

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Direct Connection
A permanent connection between your computer system and the Internet. This is sometimes referred to as a leased-line connection because the line is leased from the telephone company..

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DNS - Domain Name Server or Domain Name System
DNS refers to a database of Internet names and addresses which translates the names to the official Internet Protocol numbers and vice versa. A Domain Name Server maps IP numbers to a more easily remembered name. When you type http://www.touchstone-it.com/ into your browser, the DNS specified when you installed dial-up networking, searchs for a matching IP address (195.102.241.30). If the DNS doesn't find an entry in its database, it will ask other DNSs until the entry is found, and you will see our site. Otherwise, you'll get an error message from your browser.

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Domain name
A unique name that identifies an Internet site. A domain name points always to one specific server while this server may host many domain names. If you look at the URL for this page, you'll see www.touchstone.com at the beginning. The "www" points to the server and "touchstone.com" is our domain name. Most domain names are assigned by the InterNIC.

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Download
Transfer of data from a server to your computer's hard disk. You can use your browser or an FTP program to download files to your computer. When you're retrieving your email, you're downloading your email to your computer.

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