Web Hosting Glossary & Terms |
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Binhex
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(BINary HEXadecimal) -- A method for converting non-text files (non-ASCII) into ASCII. This is needed because Internet e-mail can only handle ASCII. |
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BIT |
(Binary DigIT) -- A single digit number in base-2, in other words, either a 1 or a zero. The smallest unit of computerized data. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits-per-second. |
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| BITNET |
(Because It's Time NETwork (or Because It's There NETwork)) -- A network of educational sites separate from the Internet, but e-mail is freely exchanged between BITNET and the Internet. Listservs, the most popular form of e-mail discussion groups, originated on BITNET. BITNET machines are usually mainframes running the VMS operating system, and the network is probably the only international network that is shrinking. |
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| BPS |
(Bits-Per-Second) -- A measurement of how fast data is moved from one place to another. A 28.8 modem can move 28,800 bits per second. |
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| Browser |
Client software that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources. Examples include Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator. |
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| BTW |
(By The Way) -- A shorthand appended to a comment written in an online forum. |
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| Byte |
A set of Bits that represent a single character. Usually there are 8 Bits in a Byte, sometimes more, depending on how the measurement is being made. See Also: Bit |
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| Certificate Authority |
| An issuer of Security Certificates used in SSL connections. |
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| CGI |
(Common Gateway Interface) -- A set of rules that describe how a Web Server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine, and how the other piece of software (the 'CGI program') talks to the web server. Any piece of software can be a CGI program if it handles input and output according to the CGI standard. |
Usually a CGI program is a small program that takes data from a web server and does something with it, like putting the content of a form into an e-mail message, or turning the data into a database query. |
| CGI "scripts" are just scripts which use CGI. CGI is often confused with Perl, which is a programming language, while CGI is an interface to the server from a particular program. Perl is an application of CGI, as well as MIVA, Python, PHP3, and other scripting languages. |
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| cgi-bin |
| The most common name of a directory on a web server in which CGI programs are stored. The 'bin' part of 'cgi-bin' is a shorthand version of 'binary', because once upon a time, most programs were referred to as 'binaries'. In real life, most programs found in cgi-bin directories are text files -- scripts that are executed by binaries located elsewhere on the server. While most programs using CGI are stored in this directory, it is not a requirement for using CGI. |
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