Glossary of Advanced Web Hosting Terms

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BACK TO BASIC TERMS

AccessMicrosoft's advanced database creation and maintenance software. It is very popular among developers who maintain online databases with Windows NT.

ActiveX A set of properties that define how applications are to share information with each other. These properties are known as controls.

Application Service Provider A third party that manages software applications for servers and networks.

Co-located hosting This hosting option gives webmasters complete control over their server. You are responsible for providing the physical hardware and network administration; the hosting company will provide you with the rack space and Internet connection.

Diesel Generator A diesel-powered generator used by hosting companies as a back-up source to generate electricity in the event of a power outage.

Flash A popular piece of animation software developed by Macromedia. Flash is widely used on the Web because it requires little bandwidth, therefore making it friendly to users with low or high-speed connections.

IIS Short for Internet Information Server, Microsoft's server software for Windows NT/2000.

Intranet A vast internal network structured in a fashion similar to the Internet. Intranets are usually established by large corporate organizations to improve communication. The main difference between the Internet and an intranet is that access to intranets are restricted to authorized members only.

IRC Short for Internet Relay Chat, a popular text-base multi-user chat network.

ISDN Short for Integrated Services Digital Network, a high-speed solution to moving data over phone lines. It can transfer data at approximately 128,000 bits per second over a standard land line.

Load Balancing Distributing data across a network of servers in order to ensure that a single Web server does not get overloaded with work, thereby affecting performance.

MIME Short for Multipurpose Internet Email Extensions, a protocol that allows users to transfer non-text messages like audio, video and images through e-mail.

Mirror sites A mirror site is an exact copy of another FTP or Web site. These are used to offset/spread traffic load on busy Web sites.

MS Index Server An add-on for Microsoft Internet Information server (see above) that indexes documents on Web or Intranet servers running IIS. The information is then presented to users in a searchable format.

Newsgroup A USENET discussion group (see below).

NOC Short for Network Operations Center, a hosting company's "home base," so to speak. The NOC is usually where most administration, technical support and physical server storage takes place. For more information, please refer to our article, Inside the NOC, here.

OC Short for Optical Carrier, representing the speed of fiber-optic networks. OC speeds can range anywhere between 1 and 48. Most hosting companies have OC3 connections, which allows for the transfer of data at a rate of up to 155.52 Mbps.

Packet switching The method by which most data is exchanged throughout the Internet. Most data is broken down in to smaller "packets" prior to transfer, and then reassembled at the destination.

POP Short for Post Office Protocol. An e-mail protocol that mail software such as Eudora use to communicate with mail servers.

Propagation The process where name servers throughout the Internet add new domains and remove expired ones from their records. This can be a lengthy process, which is why connecting to a new domain name can often take three or four days.

RAID Short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, a method of data protection/backup. Data is stored over a number of servers so that information will still be accessible if a piece of hardware/software crashes.

Scalability The ability of a piece of software or hardware to expand/grow as necessary.

SMTP Short for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, a protocol used by mail servers to exchange messages with each other.

SQL Short for Standard Query Language. A standard protocol used to request information from databases. Servers which can handle SQL are known as SQL servers.

SSL Short for Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol developed by Netscape to handle and protect confidential/sensitive information required for e-commerce transactions (like credit card numbers). SSL address usually begin with 'https'.

T1 Connection A phone or data connection that can support the transfer of up to 1.544Mbits of data per second. T1 connections are popular among businesses and ISPs. Most T1s are connected to T3, which can handle up to 43Mbits per second and are actual Internet backbone connections.

Tape back-up A popular and inexpensive way to back up Web sites. Contents of a site are periodically stored that looks similar to a cassette. Some cassettes can store several gigabytes.

Telnet A command-line interface that allows remote users and Web servers to communicate.

TCP Short for Transmission Control Protocol, an important network protocol. TCP allows two hosts to connect and exchange data, and ensures that "data packets" are delivered exactly as sent.

TLD Shot for Top Level Domain, the suffix for major domain names like .com, .net and .org.

USENET A network of thousands of discussion groups (known as newsgroups; see above) on the Internet.

UUENCODE Short for Unix to Unix Encoding, a method of converting images to ASCII (see above) text in order to be transferred over the Internet.

Virtualization A process/software designed to reduce server management costs through automation, while providing more control over service levels.

Windows NT/2000 These are graphic-based, multitasking Operating Systems developed over the past few years by Microsoft. Both can act as standalone OS for personal computers/workstations, or can serve as an OS for a Web site/network. Most Web hosting companies and resellers offer Windows-based hosting in some capacity or other.

XML Short for Extensible Markup Language. XML is a language allowing developers to create their own markup tags. All XML tags are defined by the programmer, and can be interpreted differently in different applications. For example, the "" tag in HTML means Italics, but could mean anything in XML, depending on the function the developer assigns to it.