Bits'n'Bytes

As heard on CJCD

Episode 39

Today's show is for those of you who have a high tolerance for pain or who didn't get punched at all after listening to last week's show. We're going to continue on with the topic of acronyms.

Most of you use a computer to get onto the Internet and many of you use a high speed connection. For this, your computer will have a NIC, or network interface card. This card is connected to your high speed Modem, which stands for modulator/demodulator, through a CAT5 cable. This stands for Category 5 - which is an industry standard for the quality and thickness of the wiring. Or, you might connect through a router, to a LAN or local area network. That covers pretty much any computer in your office or building. If you connect to a WAN, or wide area network, you're connecting to computers outside your office or building. The Internet is really just one super big WAN.

You might send and receive email while you're connected to the Internet. Your email program sends email using SMTP, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol - and it receives it using POP3, which is Post Office Protocol, version 3. Next, you might do some surfing. To do this, you have to type in a URL, which is a Uniform Resource Locator, to find the page you want to see. This page will be written mostly with HTML or HyperText Markup Language - which is the main programming language of the Internet.

HTML allows the programmer to put both text and pictures on a page. The page can also include links to other pages, which is how the Internet works. The pictures on the page you see are generally in the format of GIF images for Graphics Interchange Format or JPG for Joint Photographic Experts Group.

Now that your heads are probably all spinning…

Stay tuned next week for a final look at computer acronyms.

I’m Computer Dave, thanks for your time.