PawPrint.net Glossary of Terms

A protocol developed to enable the transfer of files across a network. It provides a reletively insecure username and password  security but has been more recently enhanced to allow for SSL encryption to provide a secure password exchange.

To some extent the use of FTP has been superceeded by SFTP (a component of SSH) or the secure file transfer protocol.

The Set of rules to provide system management tools to monitor activity and create messages/alerts as required. Network devices that employ SNMP are frequently referred to as "Managed" devices.

Hypertext Markup Language is the Markup-Language that evolved as the basis for layout of web-pages. It is a derivitive of the first SGML languages and has since been superceeded by derivitives of XML refertred to as XHTML.

Used in conjunction with the Internet Protocol (IP) to transmit information over the Internet in the form of units.

While IP takes care of handling the actual delivery of the data, TCP takes care of keeping track of the packets that a message is divided into for efficient routing through the Internet. For example, when a web page is downloaded from a web server, the TCP program layer in that server divides the file into packets, numbers the packets, and then forwards them individually to the ...

A compressed graphic format suited for flat color images (illustrations) and drawings. It compresses images by referencing areas of the same colour thus it is less suitable then JPEG for photographic images (where there are colour gradients)

Originally created by CompuServ it was the subject of proposed law suits and patent discussions which have largely been dropped.

A reference to a URL on the Internet that when clicked on will access the document specified.