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ISDN
interactive
Internet
IRC
Inter
NIC
IP
address |
ISDN
Integrated Service Digital Network (or ISDN
for short) is the digital telephone system that
has been touted as the replacement for our current
slow and noisy analog phone lines. ISDN promised
to standardize the high-speed (up to 128Kbps) transmission
of voice, data, and graphic images. Like plenty
of technology, however, ISDN has turned out to be
too good to be true. Digital, yes. Fast? Well, faster
than current phone lines, yes. However, ISDN doesn't
hold a candle to the blazing speed of fiber optic
lines. The final nail in ISDN's coffin is that,
depending on the phone service in your area, it
may be outrageously expensive or not available at
all. We do not currently use ISDN; however, we are
studying its use for connecting home users.
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interactive
Although it's one of the newly minted buzzwords
of the Internet, along with "information
superhighway" and "surfing," "interactive"
refers to any technology that allows the user
to exchange information with a computer program,
so that the user and the program "interact."
This interaction can be as simple as clicking
buttons or typing something in, or as complex
as steering a car or navigating a virtual world.
With such a wide definition, it's no wonder the
word has been tossed around so much as to make
it almost completely meaningless.
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Internet
An internet can refer to any distributed network
of computers, but you probably want to know about
the Internet with a capital "I." Simply
put, it's the largest of the internets. But at
its heart, it's just a bunch of computers all
over the world hooked up to one another so they
can exchange information. To exchange information
they use protocols such as FTP, Gopher, and Hypertext
Transport Protocol or HTTP (the protocol that
transfers World Wide Web information.)
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IRC
Internet Relay Chat, (or IRC) is the Internet's
version of CB radio, a real-time chat network
where users can join a myriad of ongoing discussions.
Users connect to an IRC server, which houses many
conversations, or channels. All words typed by
any user are seen by everyone who is in that channel
at a given time. New users are encouraged to lurk
until they understand the conventions of this
type of communication.
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InterNIC
Where do domain
names come from? Yep, somebody has to keep
track of them to ensure there's no duplication,
and that everyone's playing fair. That somebody
is the Internet Network Information Center (or
InterNIC), a private company funded in part by
the National Science Foundation (whose NSFnet
evolved into the Internet as we now know it).
This clearinghouse keeps tabs on all registered
domains -- whether or not the domains are currently
in use -- and handles registration for newcomers.
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IP
address
Just as postal addresses have been codified
so that snail mail can be delivered correctly
-- name on the first line, company name on the
second line, street address third, etc. -- IP
addresses have been codified to allow Internet
information (from Web pages to e-mail) to be delivered
correctly. To the Internet, a given server's IP
address is all numbers and dots in the format
"000.000.000.0," but since humans aren't
as good as computers at remembering numbers, IP
numeric addresses also have a textual representation.
The usual format is [machine name].[sponsoring
organization].[type of organization, such as ".com"].
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