Internet Glossary

An ad hoc network is a type of wireless local area network (WLAN) that enables devices to connect with others without the need for access points (APs), such as built-in or external routers. Through such a network, computers can talk to each other and exchange files. One device can also share its Internet connection with other devices. Because of this feature, ad hoc networks are also called “peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.”

An ad hoc network setup differs from an infrastructure one in that it is decentralized. That means it eliminates the need for devices to connect to a “mother” to communicate.

An ad hoc network works similarly as a Bluetooth connection (bear in mind though that Bluetooth is a different type of technology). Paired devices can share an Internet connection and transmit files.

A browser is a computer program that people use so they can surf the Web. The main function of a browser is to display the pages of a website. Not all browsers are the same. Some are more capable of providing data security to users, while others offer a faster browsing experience.

If computers were cars, the Internet was the world, and every website was a destination, then we could say that the roads we take to get from one place to another are the ‘browsers.’

Canvas fingerprinting is a technique websites use to track visitors who access their content. It uses the HyperText Markup Language 5 (HTML5) Canvas feature to do the job. HTML5 is a programming language for displaying and organizing web pages.

To create a canvas fingerprint, HTML5 instructs the browser to draw text or three-dimensional (3D) graphics on the canvas when a user visits a site. It is then rendered into a digital token that serves as a unique identifier that allows the website to remember the visitor and his or her browsing history.

A canvas fingerprint can track website visitors based on their browser, operating system (OS), and graphics hardware.

The darknet refers to any private virtual network accessible only to a few select users. It traces its roots to the need for security, and as such, it lies “in the dark” and doesn’t appear on network lists.

In the early days, though, the darknet referred to networks outside the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) that could receive messages but were unable to make any form of response. They couldn’t even acknowledge that the message was received, unlike Facebook Messenger or any chat app that can tag a message as “seen.”

These days, the term “darknet” has taken on a whole new meaning, and it isn’t called such for nothing.

Data privacy is an aspect of information technology that determines what computer data individuals or organizations can share with others. This includes sensitive details that malicious individuals can exploit such as personal information you might provide for various purposes when you use computers.

Sensitive data is often sent to an electronic database and kept there. If this information falls into the wrong hands, you could be in trouble. This is the reason why there’s a need to preserve and protect such information from being accessed by unwanted people.

Digital natives are people from the generation that grew up in the digital age. They consider technology a necessary part of life, are naturally tech-savvy and from an early age have become very comfortable with computers and digital devices.

You can compare them to the native residents of a foreign town, who know the language and are masters of the terrain. Digital natives speak the language of tech and are masters of digital technologies.

The creation and exchange of information through the Internet has become so widespread that it must be governed by its own set of rules to protect those who own the information from those who seek to exploit it for their own gain. These rules are called "digital rights," and they are your legal and moral entitlements to access, use, and create digital media.

Usually, the term is applied particularly in relation to the realization and protection of existing rights, such as freedom of expression and right to privacy, under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Digital rights are the cyberspace equivalent of each person's inalienable human rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a scheme that uses a combination of technologies to protect digital content from unauthorized users. It also determines what you can and cannot do with digital material. Maybe you’ll be allowed to read only a few chapters of an ebook you downloaded. Or maybe you’ll only be able to watch a few selected parts of a video. It all depends on how the content owner has set up the scheme.

DRM is like a lock that prevents you from reading an ebook, listening to music, watching a video, or printing a file if you don’t have the key. The lock is actually a piece of software that scrambles up or encrypts the original content. Only users with the right decryption key — a long, complex sequence of text characters that functions as a powerful password — can unscramble it.

If you think digitalization means converting analog information into digital format, you’re off the bat. That process is called digitization. Digitalization, on the other hand, is something much deeper.

It is a mindset of applying digital technologies to every aspect of our personal and business lives. For example, from snail mail, we can digitalize to email or SMS. From manual record-keeping, we shift to automated digital ledgers.

Digitalization is like a paradigm shift from the old way of thinking to a newer way of seeing things.

Data can be in the form of a love letter you wrote, or a voice recording you for your family. It could consist of the photographs from your childhood. All of these can be easily lost or destroyed. But they can be preserved by converting them into a digital form through digitization.

Digitization is the process of scanning and converting physical information — such as paper documents, photographs, or sound — into digital form (bits and bytes) that can then be stored and processed by a computer.

On the Internet, websites are assigned specific addresses consisting of 4 groups of numbers. It's cumbersome and difficult, though, to find websites this way. It's easier to recall an address that contains the brand name or describes what the site is about. This is why domain names were invented.

A domain name is a unique name that identifies a website. It allows people to locate a page through words or names that can be easily remembered. You can actually think of the domain name as the equivalent of a company's address.

The domain name system (DNS) is a system for naming computers on the Internet. It's a database that maps each numerical Internet address (called an IP address) with the corresponding domain name. This is important because while people input websites by their names, computers access domains through IP addresses. DNS allows you to simply look up a domain name, and the DNS will direct you to its address.

The DNS is like the telephone directory of the Internet.

An external link is a connection on a web page to another page on a different website. It contains the name of the target page as well as the domain name of the website it's on. The user simply clicks on this link, and they are brought immediately to the connected page.

The external link is like a doorway that magically takes the user from the current website to an entirely different one.

An extranet is a private network that only authorized users can access. These authorized users may include business partners, suppliers, and even some customers. They can use the extranet to exchange information with each other without having to enter the host company's main network.

An extranet is like a secure file room located somewhere off the company premises. Only those issued a key can enter and browse through the filing cabinets.

You might have come upon a story on the Web one day that got you so engrossed it brought about certain emotions. The next day, however, you learned that it wasn’t true after all. Super annoying, right? Well, that’s fake news for you.

Fake news are news stories that are absolutely untrue. They deliberately misinform people about a certain individual, company, government, etc. — often to make them look bad. This type of misinformation generally uses outrageous headlines that grab the attention of readers.

Fake news are like the obituaries proclaiming the death of a person who is very much alive.

The European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Rule (GDPR) is a law that came into effect on May 25th, 2018, to protect the data privacy of citizens of EU countries.

GDPR calls for transparency on what data are being collected when people transact online, what they are being collected for, and how unnecessary (and questionable) data collection can be avoided. It also mandates substantial penalties for non-compliance with the regulation.

In social media, a hashtag is a symbol that is placed in front of a word so that people can easily find the post it's in. It's usually the hash symbol ('#'). Hashtags make posts easier to locate and follow so people can contribute to them or use them as a reference for various purposes.

Hashtags are like ring binders which hold together important documents and make them easily available when needed.

Hosting is the service of providing storage space and resources on a server for a website. A website’s information, content, and everything else pertaining to it are stored, maintained, and kept safe in the server linked to the Internet. The company that provides the hosting services is known as a Web host. It is the one in charge of ensuring that your website stays online, as long as you continue paying the fees, of course.

Hosting works the same way as landlords renting out an apartment. Paying the landlord regularly assures the resident continuous use of the apartment unit.

You visit an online store, and suddenly, you see your browser display an ‘HTTPS’ rather than the regular ‘HTTP.’ What just happened? Did you just get redirected to another website?

Well, the good news is that you’re still in the same domain, and the information you shared will be kept safe so that no one would be able to steal them. That is because the website is using HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure or HTTPS.

It is a method of communicating information on the Worldwide Web and the secure version of the original Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTPS is usually applied in order to protect highly sensitive transactions on the Web, such as with online shopping and online banking.

The Internet is a system of computer networks all over the world that can exchange data with each other using a standard communication protocol called TCP/IP. It is decentralized, and no single entity owns or controls it. There are several organizations in the world, however, that work together to maintain and improve the Internet. These include the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the assignment of domain names and IP addresses, and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which looks after the technical aspects of the Internet.

The Internet is similar to a modern city that features interstate highways. These freeways link to secondary roads and local streets. Each house has a driveway connected to this extensive road network. Think of each house as a computer, and the road system as the Internet.

In its most basic form, Internet censorship refers to restrictions to viewing certain information and content on the Web. It is commonly imposed by governments to prevent people, especially children, from accessing illicit content.

If the Internet is like the superhighway for information, then we can say that Internet censorship is the roadblock we sometimes encounter that controls what people can and cannot access.

Internet cookies (often simply called "cookies") are small files placed by Web servers in your computer when you visit a website for the first time. They place them there to remember who you are and what you did when you visited their site. So the next time you access their site, they can make the experience smoother and more convenient for you by serving up personalized content.

Think of Internet cookies as nametags you wear at a party. The host sees the tag and remembers who you are.

An Internet service provider (ISP) is a company or an organization that lets your computer connect to the World Wide Web. It provides customers access to one or more high-speed Internet lines. An ISP may offer other services as well, such as web hosting and digital storage space rental services and access to software, among others. ISPs compete among themselves in terms of bandwidth and coverage—anything that enables them to provide the best signal and transmission speed.

You can compare an ISP to a water tap. There’s water flowing through the main pipe, but you can’t get any unless you install a faucet.

An intranet is a computer network that’s only accessible to an organization and its employees. It is a dedicated and exclusive hub where staff can safely communicate and share data. You can compare it to a private club with special services and privileges that are not open to the public. 

An intranet uses a local area network (LAN), a computer network that interconnects the computers of the different members of the intranet, where they hold office. In contrast, a company may also set up an extranet, a private network for exchanging information securely through the Internet with a select group of clients, suppliers, and customers.

If people have an address, well most of them do, your computer has got one too. 

It's called an Internet Protocol (IP) address composed of a set of numbers separated by periods. 

Every computer device that is connected to the Internet is given one. Otherwise, there'd be no way to locate or identify it in the vast universe of the Web and people won’t have a clue where to send you messages and files.

Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the fourth edition of the Internet Protocol. It is a system of identifying individual computers and digital devices on the Internet by assigning each one with a unique address.

IPv4 address consists of a set of four numbers separated by a period character ("."), often referred to as a "dot." Each number can be from 0 to 254. Some addresses may not be assigned because they are reserved for special uses. IPv4 can accommodate up to 4 billion unique addresses, but these have already been used up as the Internet continues to grow.

You can think of IPv4 as the unique ID which a computer, smartphone, or game console displays to communicate with similar devices.

Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is a revision designed to upgrade the old IPv4 system as it ran out of available network addresses. Instead of 4 sets of decimal numbers separated by periods (".") used by IPv4, IPv6 uses eight sets of alpha-numeric hexadecimal numbers.

This minor change produces a virtually unlimited number of unique IP addresses. It also provides more efficient routing, better security, and eliminates many network problems such as duplicate addresses assigned to different devices.

When the phone system runs out of telephone numbers, one of the simplest solutions is to add one more digit or create new area codes. This is similar to what IPv6 does for Internet addressing.

A keyword is a term or phrase that best describes the entire content, or at least a part of it, on your page. It's the term you enter into Google and other search engines to find websites about the subject matter you are interested in. The search engines go through websites and compile all of the keywords in a list of web pages which it presents back to the user. In this context, a keyword is the reference point which a search engine like Google uses to find the information you want.

A keyword is like a set of specifications given to a store clerk. The clerk then searches the store for items that match your specs exactly, or even somewhat closely.

Piracy is the practice of illegally duplicating content, such as computer programs or branded merchandise, to sell them for a fraction of what they would normally fetch. The original owner of the content is not compensated for this transaction. Piracy has become a billion-dollar industry that is outlawed in many countries.

It is like sneaking onto a train or bus without paying for the fare. You benefit from it, but shortchange the transport company providing the service.

A registrar is an organization responsible for reserving domain names and assigning unique IP addresses to these. You pay a monthly or yearly fee to register your desired website name so that no one else can use it. Trusted domain registrars are accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private organization tasked to manage and allocate Domain Name System (DNS) resources.

If a domain name is like a home address, then a domain registrar is like the land registry office where we go to log our website (home) and claim it as our own.

A search engine is a computer program that helps you find specific information about a subject matter you are interested in. You enter a term or a phrase, called a "keyword," about whatever you want to learn about. The search engine then gives you a list of the websites that may have the most relevant information about the topic. This list is called a search engine results page (SERP). Some of the examples of search engines include Google, Bing, DuckDuck Go, Yandex, and Dogpile.

A search engine is like a librarian. You tell her the topic you are working on, and she provides you with a list of books and where to find them in the library.

A virtual private server (VPS) is a web hosting service that lets users have their own exclusive web hosting environment. There may be several virtual servers running within a single physical server. But to the customers, each one looks and feels like an independent machine. Compared with other web hosting services, a VPS is more stable, performs better, provides more disk space and memory, and is more flexible in terms of features.

A VPS is like a luxury apartment. While a low-end apartment complex could have hundreds of tenants, your high-end building only has a handful, allowing you to enjoy prime accommodation and facilities.

Web 1.0 refers to the original state of the Internet when it was just getting started. Back then it was nothing more than a static collection of Web pages connected by hyperlinks. It was not interactive, the graphics were basic, and the content was limited.

Internet 1.0 is the Web equivalent of the Rennaissance age. Human intellectual development was accelerating, and technology was beginning to advance. But it would take some more time for progress to take place in all fields of human endeavor.

Web 2.0 describes the evolution of the Worldwide Web from its original form to the next level of development. This stage is characterized by the use of dynamic web pages and user-generated content. It also coincides with the beginnings of a more participative culture that saw the birth of social media.

Web 2.0 is like a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon as a beautiful butterfly.

A web host is a business that provides the tools for a website to be seen on the Internet. These tools include a physical server and storage space on which you can keep your website's files. It also includes the web server and the software that lets people access your website.

A Web host also lets you upload files to the Web server, setup and use domain email accounts (e.g., yourname@yourwebsite.com), and manage content on your page. It won't likely build the website for you though. You'll need to either hire a Web developer or put it together yourself.

A web host is like an office space you rent on a floor filled with offices leased by other people. This is where you keep your important business documents. Prospective customers come and visit to inquire about doing business.

WHOIS is a query and response protocol that provides information about existing domain names and all the pertinent data about them. This includes the owner’s contact details, domain registration, and expiration dates, information about registrars, etc. WHOIS helps you make sure that all the relevant information about a particular registered domain are authentic and up-to-date. This is crucial to prevent fraud and identity theft.

You can think of WHOIS as a private investigator that gives you information about a person of interest. In this case, it will be a domain of interest.

The Worldwide Web, or simply the Web, is the network of websites and web resources from all over the world connected together by the Internet and interlinked with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The main purpose of these resources is to serve content to anyone who wants it. You can access the information or complete a transaction by using a software called a browser to connect to the right website.

The Web is like an enormous bazaar where you can find any sort of information, but you have to know where and how to find it amidst this connected network of stalls and stores.