default

dial-up

dither

DLL

DNS

Driver

domain

domain name

download

default

The settings that a device or program will have without any intervention. Usually you can change the default setting, but you should be very careful. Before changing these settings, remember to write down the default settings.

dial-up
Dial-up describes the kind of connection you have if you dial a number through your computer to connect to the Internet.

dither
Yuck! How could they put up such an ugly graphic? Every now and then you'll see a photo or image on the Web that looks like the colors have completely run amuck. Netscape and Internet Explorer aren't particularly intelligent about colors -- they can only handle 216, whereas your eye can see well over 16 million. The process by which the browsers try to make their very few colors compensate for so many is called dithering. The browsers create an approximate version of the color they don't have, sort of like mixing paint in an understocked paint store. Sometimes it succeeds, and sometimes it doesn't.

DLL

Short for Dynamic Link Library. A file with information needed by one or more programs. Don't delete files with this extension because your programs may not work without them.

DNS
Ever wondered how your Internet connection knows exactly where to find all the places you tell it to go? A computer called a DNS handles the map-reading duties for you on the Internet. When you click on (or type in) a URL, it gets sent to the DNS to figure out where, say, "www.yil.com might be located. If it knows off the bat it sends you there; otherwise, it asks other DNSs until it figures out the directions to the computer. When it can't find the address that you asked for, it says" DNS can not be found".  DNS stands for "Domain Name Server."

Driver

A program made up of instructions to operate things that are added to your computer such as a mouse, printer, or modem. Windows 95 inlcudes most of the drivers that you'll need, but there are occasions when you'll need another driver from the manufacturer of the device.

domain (.edu, .com, .mil, .net, .uk, et al)
Just as a PC's file extensions (such as .doc for MS Word files) give some indication of what kind of file it is, the last part of an Internet site's domain name tells what kind of site it is. The most rapidly expanding of these is ".com," as in www.nbc.com. (That stands for commercial, not comedy.) Other common ones include .edu, for educational institutions, .gov for government, and .mil, for military sites. For sites based outside the U.S., there are plenty others. You can guess the origin of .uk, for instance. It gets more confusing once you start dealing with other countries' sub-domains, such as the UK's ".ac" for academic.

domain name
The last two parts of an Internet address. For instance, if you look at the URL for this page, you'll see it begins with www.pekin.net. Our domain name is pekin.net. The "www" part tells the server the machine from which we'd like to retrieve our information. Although "www" is the most common precursor, you will see others, such as home.netscape.com, or sites with no precursor at all, such as nbc.com.

download
You've probably put software on your computer by putting diskettes into a disk drive. Online, you can get software by downloading it. The software sits on some other computer; you use your browser or an FTP (file-transfer protocol) program to find and retrieve the software to your computer. If you had software you wanted to send to another computer, you'd reverse the process; this is known as "uploading."