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Explanatory Dictionary - UVW





USB - Universal Serial Bus

This is a fairly recent feature of new computers, that simplifies adding peripherals (mice, printers, scanners, etc) to your PC.

Most (if not all) new PCs come with USB ports built-in, the amount of USB ports your PC has will depend on the manufacturer and model.

If you need more USB ports then you can purchase special devices (internal and external) which will allow you to add more USB devices fairly easily.

You can connect USB devices while the PC is switched on, also it isn't necessary to restart the PC and SHOULD automatically prompt the user to load any necessary drivers that came with your device.

USB 2.0 is a newer implementation of the USB standard and was jointly developed by Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, NEC and Philips.

USB 2.0 provides a higher data transfer rate of up to 480Mbps (Megabits per second).

VPN - Virtual Private Network

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) refers to a secure network connection that uses the internet to transmit data.

The data is typically encrypted using different tunneling protocols such as L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol) and PPTP (Point to Point Tunneling Protocol) in which the encrypted data is encapsulated in Internet wrappers before it is transmitted.

When the data is received at its destination the Internet wrapper is stripped off and the data decrypted.

Typical uses of VPNs would be to create a private WAN without the need to lease dedicated lines or provide travelling employees with a secure connection to company data.

WAN - Wide Area Network

As the name suggests it is a network of computers over a wide geographical area.

WAP - Wireless Application Protocol

WAP (wireless application protocol) refers to a wireless transfer protocol developed by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Unwired Planet.

The WAP protocol allows users of handheld devices such as mobile phones to access data and view locally.

Most WAP devices can support HTML, XML, WML and WMLScript.

All operating systems can support the WAP specification, although there are operating systems that have been designed with WAP in mind, such as for PDA's (Windows CE and PalmOS are 2 examples).

WAV - WAV audio file

An audio file format developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, WAV audio files have a file extension of .wav and are commonly used within the Windows environment.

There are many WAV editors on the market, allowing you to record, edit and play WAV files on your PC.

As WAV files are largely uncompressed they can be very big in size, this has lead to MP3's becoming a more popular format for audio files as they are equal in quality but highly compressed allowing for easier transfer. There are many programs available to convert WAV files to the MP3 format.

WI-FI - Wireless Fidelity 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g

WI-FI refers to a type of wireless technology which allows users to connect to a local network without the need for cables, also known as a WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network).

WWW - World Wide Web

Describes the internet as a whole, millions of computers all over the world connected via phone lines and modems.

Originally developed by Brit Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while working in Geneva for CERN, he went on in 1990 to create the first WWW server, the first web browser (called WorldWideWeb), the URL addressing system and the HTML language. He now leads the World Wide Web consortium (W3C).