The Verse - Volume 21
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Tech Tips - The Executive’s Internet Glossary

Sometimes people who work with technology seem to perform magic, or at least they speak in a language that’s not easily understood by us non-technical folks. Tech jargon, cyber slang and what seems like an endless line of acronyms flow out of the Network Engineer’s mouth and right over most of our heads. So that you can more easily understand what these magicians of the motherboard are talking about, just check out the PC World executive guide to the basic vocabulary of the Internet. And the next time your technology support guy comes around, drop a few of these on him and blow his mind!

TCP/IP: The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol is the network software that allows your system to bundle data into packets and send it. The computers and network routers that make up the Internet look at the source and destination IP addresses tacked onto each packet to determine how best to move it to its destination. That's the good news. The bad news is that any of these packets could include an attack against your PC.

IP address: If your system is connected to a local network or to the Internet, it relies on an Internet Protocol address to move data packets. Three IP address ranges are reserved for private networks, such as the one in your home or office: 169.254.xxx.xxx, 10.10.xxx.xxx, and 192.168.xxx.xxx (where 'xxx' is any number from 0 to 255). If your computer uses a public address (any address outside the private address ranges noted above), it is susceptible to attacks from other PCs on the network. This is why a Windows XP system that's not patched against such direct attacks as the Blaster worm will crash within a few minutes of being connected through a public IP address. Windows assigns 169.254 addresses when it can't see a DHCP server (see below). To find your IP address in Windows XP, right-click My Network Places and choose Properties. Select your LAN connection in the right pane, and your IP address will be listed under Details in the left pane (click the downward-pointing chevron to view the Details info, if necessary).

DHCP and NAT: The Dynamic Host Control Protocol allows one computer or other network device (such as a router) to hand out private IP addresses to other PCs. If your computer's address lies in one of the private ranges noted above, a DHCP server probably assigned it. Similarly, Network Address Translation permits a device or computer (usually the same one that runs the DHCP server) to translate the public addresses on incoming packets into the private addresses that your local computers use. This enables you to browse the Web, send and receive e-mail, and connect to other Internet servers while staying invisible to attacking PCs. Even if your system is vulnerable to the Blaster worm, for example, NAT prevents the vermin from getting through.

DNS: The Web's domain-name system lets you connect to PC World's Web site using the domain name 'www.pcworld.com', instead of having to enter the site's IP address. The end of the site name (the '.com' in the case of 'www.pcworld.com') is called the top-level domain. The second-level domain ('.pcworld') appears just to the left of the top-level domain. The 'www' is a third-level domain, which can be almost anything--a fact phishers exploit to deceive victims.