Terminology

Here is a list of common terms used in this project and on our forums, if we missed any out then please let us know!

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

B
|- Bandwidth - Every ISP will give you a certain amount of bandwidth which can be either speed in Kilobytes per second (e.g. 512kbps) Megabits per second (e.g. 2 Megabits) or either a bandwidth cap which restricts you to how much you can download and upload in a specific time period.
|- Broadband - High speed Internet connections that come in the forms of ASDL, Cable, SDSL, Leased Lines and newer forms such as ADSL2.
|- Browser - A piece of software that allows you to view websites in a text and graphic form rather than raw HTML.
|- Browsing - See Crawling...
|- Buckets - A unit of work that contains up to 10,000 website addresses. Buckets are used by the node to crawl websites on the Internet.

C
|- Cap - A limit of data transfer on your broadband connection. It limits the amount you can download and upload in a specified time period. When a cap is reached often an ISP will either charge you or could even kick you off your ISP.
|- Crawling - Visiting websites on the Internet and retrieving the information from those sites

D
|- Dense - A bucket that contains a large number of domains
|- Distributed Computing - The ability to use get many computers to perform one task rather than using one which would take more time.
|- DNS - means Domain Name System which translates domain names to ip addresses
|- Domain - A domain is a prefix that follows on from the name that a website is given, e.g. the domain for Microsoft is .COM

F
|- Firefox - Another example of a web browser created recently by the Mozilla Foundation to address the security problems experienced by Internet Explorer users and allowing new features that do not exist currently in Internet Explorer.

G
|- Google - Some would say that this is the ultimate search engine on the Internet at the moment, but some of us are trying to change that, hint hint!

H
|- HTML - Means Hypertext Markup Language, it's basically what websites are written in to display text and graphics in your browser. Example.. Right click on this page and click View Source/HTML to see the HTML for this page :)
|- HTTP - Means Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is what allows your web browser to make a request for a web page that's on a server. Once the server recieves the HTTP request it sends the web page information to your browser. Without it, websites would not exist.
|- HTTPS - This is the secure version of the HTTP protocol, it is often used by Banks and websites that are required to ask for a username and password to keep their data secure and protected from preying eyes..

I
|- IANA - Internet Assigned Numbers Authority which controls and maintains Top Level Domain lists that are used on the Internet. e.g. .uk, .com, etc..
|- Internet - A collection of millions/billions of computers all connected in a spider web type way that spans the globe.
|- Internet Explorer - An example of a web browser created by Microsoft to address the needs for a way to view the Internet and web pages.
|- IP - means Internet Protocol, often referred to in IP Addresses. Every machine and website on the internet is given a unique IP address which can be used with DNS to assign a name or website to an IP address.

M
|- Majestic 12 - This was a collection of papers that described a top secret government organization known as "Majestic 12," a cabal of some of history's most prominent names, which was in charge of protecting what the government knew about extraterrestrials and flying saucers. And according to the documents, "what the government knew" was rather a lot.

N
|- Node - Is a device/computer that is connected to a network, in our case the node is connected to a network of other computers that are all crawling the web and uploading results back to a master server.

P
|- Profiles - A set of conditions that can be set in the Node to allow the software to run at full speed at a certain time or stop it running if a program is found running.

S
|- Search Engine - allows people around the world to search on keywords to find websites of interest. Without search engines people would only find websites by word of mouth and it would take a long time to find information.
|- Server - A computer that is built to be more powerful than a standard computer and is built to stay running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
|- Sparse - A bucket that contains a small number of domains.
|- Superpeer - The master server that is used in the project to send out new work buckets and receive finished buckets.

T
|- TLD - Means Top Level Domain, a list of domains that have been approved by the IANA for use on the Internet. A list can be found here.

U
|- URL - the address given to a website, e.g. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/

W
|- WWW - Means World Wide Web, most websites have a www. prefix before the name of the site