PawPrint.net Glossary of Terms

A protocol for asynchronous data communications that represents the evolution from x.25 and Frame Relay. It includes specific considerations for QoS and allows for different packet priority and size.

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.

An extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for GIF and can also replace many common uses of TIFF. Indexed-color, grayscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel for transparency. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits per component (up to 48bit images for RGB, or 64bit for RGBA).

RAM is a type of computer storage whose contents can be accessed in any order. This is in contrast to sequential memory devices such as magnetic tapes, discs and drums, in which the mechanical movement of the storage medium forces the computer to access data in a fixed order. It is usually implied that RAM can be both written to and read from, in contrast to read-only memory or ROM.

Computers use RAM to hold the program code and data during execution. In the first electronic computers, RAM wa...

The opening of a lens that admits light. Except in very simple cameras, the Aperture can be varied in size by an adjustable  diaphragm, which regulates the amount of light passing through the lens. The relative Aperture is measured as the focal length of the lens divided by the diameter of the Aperture; this is expressed as an f-number: f/3, f/5, and so on.

Aperature has a dramatic effect on the Depth-of-field of the photograph.

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.