Internet Dictionary
Click on a letter to see the relevant terms: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z
FAQ Frequently Asked Questions. A FAQ page is often included at support web sites such as this one. It's a list of questions that have been asked and answered enough times to merit posting at the web site. Unfortunately, the questions you want answered most never seem to be on the FAQ list.
Fiber-optic cable Instead of using thin strands of wire to make a cable, we can use thin fibers of glass or plastic. Then instead of a stream of electrons through wires, we can have a stream of light beams through the fibers. The major advantage of fiber-optic cable is its bandwidth of 100 Mbps, which is 10 times faster than Ethernet. Fiber-optic cables are replacing wire cables as the backbone of large networks.
File A series of bits with a clearly identified beginning and ending that is a coded representation of a program, image, text document, etc. A file is the basic unit of information stored on a hard disk. Files have names like write.exe, sunrise.bmp, chap3.txt, etc.
Finger This is not as bad as it sounds. It's a program that gives information about somebody on the Internet. For instance, some ISPs include a finger program allowing you to type "finger username@host.domain" at a Unix prompt. This brings up the user's real name and other information. Finger programs are being shut down at most sites because they're too useful to crackers.
Firewall A firewall is hardware and software that prevent hackers and crackers from infiltrating LANs and intranets that are connected to the Internet or to some other outside network. The idea is to let only certain kinds of messages pass between the outside network and the protected network. All traffic has to pass through the firewall, which is a separate computer isolated from the protected LAN or intranet. The firewall filters the traffic by checking the source and destination addresses. (Remember: every computer connected to the Internet has an IP address.) The term firewall is synonymous with bastion host and secure Internet connection.
Flame Newsgroups are usually friendly places where people with common interests share news, opinions, and ideas by posting messages to a common bulletin board. Occasionally, somebody's toes get stepped on and a confrontation occurs. It may start with an ambiguous comment taken the wrong way. The reply that comes back may be a strong insult, which leads to return blast. You should have the idea by now. A flame is a posting to a newsgroup ranging from mild sarcasm to hot name-calling.
FTP File Transfer Protocol. It's the set of rules used by computers to transfer files. The files may be program files (.exe), text files (.txt), image files (.gif), zip files (.zip), etc.
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