Internet Terminology

Internet Terminology

ISP (Internet Service Provider)

An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services accessing and using the Internet. Internet service providers may be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned.

An ISP (Internet service provider) is a company that provides individuals and other companies access to the Internet and other related services such as Web site building and virtual hosting. An ISP has the equipment and the telecommunication line access required to have a point-of-presence on the Internet for the geographic area served. The larger ISPs have their own high-speed leased lines so that they are less dependent on the telecommunication providers and can provide better service to their customers. Among the largest national and regional ISPs are AT&T WorldNet, IBM Global Network, MCI, Netcom, UUNet, and PSINet.

Intranet

An intranet is a private network accessible only to an organization's staff. Generally a wide range of information and services from the organization's internal IT systems are available that would not be available to the public from the Internet. A company-wide intranet can constitute an important focal point of internal communication and collaboration, and provide a single starting point to access internal and external resources. In its simplest form an intranet is established with the technologies for local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs).

Similarities between Internet and Intranet

·         Intranet uses the internet protocols such as TCP/IP and FTP.

·         Intranet sites are accessible via the web browser in a similar way as websites in the internet. However, only members of Intranet network can access intranet hosted sites.

·         In Intranet, own instant messengers can be used as similar to yahoo messenger/gtalk over the internet.

Differences between Internet and Intranet

·         Internet is general to PCs all over the world whereas Intranet is specific to few PCs.

·         Internet provides a wider and better access to websites to a large population, whereas Intranet is restricted.

·         Internet is not as safe as Intranet. Intranet can be safely privatized as per the need.

VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal)

A very small aperture terminal (VSAT) is a two-way satellite ground station with a dish antenna that is smaller than 3.8 meters. The majority of VSAT antennas range from 75 cm to 1.2 m. Data rates, in most cases, range from 4 kbit/s up to 16 Mbit/s. VSATs access satellites in geosynchronous orbit or geostationary orbit to relay data from small remote Earth stations (terminals) to other terminals (in mesh topology) or master Earth station "hubs" (in star topology).

VSATs are used to transmit narrowband data (e.g., point-of-sale transactions using credit cards, polling or RFID data, or SCADA), or broadband data (for the provision of satellite Internet access to remote locations, VoIP or video). VSATs are also used for transportable, on-the-move (utilising phased array antennas) or mobile maritime communications.

VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) is a satellite communications system that serves home and business users. A VSAT end user needs a box that interfaces between the user's computer and an outside antenna with a transceiver. The tranceiver receives or sends a signal to a satellite transponder in the sky.

The satellite sends and receives signals from an earth station computer that acts as a hub for the system. Each end user is interconnected with the hub station via the satellite in a star topology. For one end user to communicate with another, each transmission has to first go to the hub station which retransmits it via the satellite to the other end user's VSAT. VSAT handles data, voice, and video signals.

VSAT is used both by home users who sign up with a large service such as DirecPC and by private companies that operate or lease their own VSAT systems. VSAT offers a number of advantages over terrestrial alternatives. For private applications, companies can have total control of their own communication system without dependence on other companies. Business and home users also get higher speed reception than if using ordinary telephone service or ISDN.

URL

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although many people use the two terms interchangeably. URLs occur most commonly to reference web pages (http), but are also used for file transfer (ftp), email (mailto), database access (JDBC), and many other applications.

Most web browsers display the URL of a web page above the page in an address bar. A typical URL could have the form http://www.example.com/index.html, which indicates a protocol (http), a hostname (www.example.com), and a file name (index.html).

Portal

Portal is a term, generally synonymous with gateway, for a World Wide Web site that is or proposes to be a major starting site for users when they get connected to the Web or that users tend to visit as an anchor site. There are general portals and specialized or niche portals. Some major general portals include Yahoo, Excite, Netscape, Lycos, CNET, Microsoft Network, and America Online's AOL.com. Examples of niche portals include Garden.com (for gardeners), Fool.com (for investors), and SearchNetworking.com (for network administrators).

A number of large access providers offer portals to the Web for their own users. Most portals have adopted the Yahoo style of content categories with a text-intensive, faster loading page that visitors will find easy to use and to return to. Companies with portal sites have attracted much stock market investor interest because portals are viewed as able to command large audiences and numbers of advertising viewers.

Typical services offered by portal sites include a directory of Web sites, a facility to search for other sites, news, weather information, e-mail, stock quotes, phone and map information, and sometimes a community forum. Excite is among the first portals to offer users the ability to create a site that is personalized for individual interests.

Website that serves as a gateway or a main entry point ('cyber door') on the internet to a specific field-of-interest or an industry. A portal provides at least four essential services: (1) search engine(s), (2) email, (3) links to other related sites, and (4) personalized content. It may also provide facilities such as chat, members list, free downloads, etc. Portals such as AOL, MSN, Netcenter, and Yahoo, earn their revenue from membership fees and/or by selling advertising space on their webpages. Also called portal site or web portal.

Domain Name Server

Domain Name Servers (DNS) are the Internet's equivalent of a phone book. They maintain a directory of domain names and translate them to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

This is necessary because, although domain names are easy for people to remember, computers or machines, access websites based on IP addresses.

Information from all the domain name servers across the Internet are gathered together and housed at the Central Registry. Host companies and Internet Service Providers interact with the Central Registry on a regular schedule to get updated DNS information.

When you type in a web address, e.g., www.smgc.com, your Internet Service Provider views the DNS associated with the domain name, translates it into a machine friendly IP address (for example 216.168.224.70 is the IP for smgc.com) and directs your Internet connection to the correct website.

After you register a new domain name or when you update the DNS servers on your domain name, it usually takes about 12-36 hours for the domain name servers world-wide to be updated and able to access the information. This 36-hour period is referred to as propagation.