Internet Acronyms For Beginners
If you intend to use the internet for anything other than checking your email, it’s valuable to know a little bit about the acronyms you’ll encounter along the way.
ISP is an acronym for “Internet Service Provider”. This is simply the company that you pay for internet service. Cable, DSL, wireless, and dial-up are different methods of accessing the internet and a few examples of different ISP companies are Comcast, Roadrunner, Verizon, and Net Zero. If you subscribe to Comcast’s internet service and someone asks you “what’s your FTP?” you’d say “Comcast”. Simple, right?
IP stands for “Internet Protocol” which is a set of standardized techniques that have been established for transmitting information on the internet. Every machine that is connected to the internet receives a unique IP address that is used to identify it, like a fingerprint. IP addresses are groups of 2-3 numbers strung together with decimal points that usually look something like this: 66.33.209.103.
DNS stands for “Domain Name System”. A website’s domain name looks like this: www.google.com. Every time you type in the domain name of a website, your computer finds the IP address associated with that domain name and accesses the information at that IP address. Your computer can find the IP associated with the domain name you enter because of the DNS. The DNS matches domain names with IP addresses so we humans can make it to the same website time and again by typing in the name of the website we want to find rather than trying to remember a long string of numbers (the IP address).
HTML is an acronym for “Hyper Text Markup Language”. This is a widely known coding language that is typically used for files that are meant to be viewed on the internet. HTML designates the formatting of a website including text fonts, colors, picture placement, and other simple graphics.
WWW stands for “World Wide Web” which is just a fancy way to say “the internet”.
FAQ is a common page for organizations and companies to include on their websites. It means “Frequently Asked Questions” and is typically just a list of common questions that people have about them and their answers. Before you go to the trouble of writing to someone when you have a question, make sure you check their website’s FAQ page. You might save yourself some time.
FTP is an acronym for “File Transfer Protocol”. FTP is a system of protocol set up to allow users to transfer files from one computer to another. FTP is typically used by webmasters to upload code (like html) and multimedia files to websites, and by people who download large files over the internet.
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