Network analyzer glossary

Administrator
Administrator (username: admin) is a special preconfigured user that always exists in  Colasoft configuration. Administrator always has complete access to and full privileges in Colasoft administrative system. Additional Users can be created with the same level of control power as Administrator.

Apache
Apache is a free, open-source web server software system that is pervasive on UNIX, Linux, and similar operating system types. It is also available for Windows and other OSes. Colasoft's admin system is powered by a variant of Apache. For more information, see Apache.org.

Authentication
Technique by which access to Internet or intranet resources requires a user to enter username and password.

Bandwidth
A amount of data can be transmitted along a communications channel in fixed time. For digital devices, the bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or bytes per second.

Browsers
Actually, a browser shall be more accurately termed as a server agent for user. In other words,  whatever software you use to access website, that usually is such things like "Explorer" (for Microsoft Internet Explorer) or "Netscape" (for Netscape Navigator), and also commonly is such things like "Googlebot" (an automated robot that scours the web for website content to include in its search engine).

Bytes
A byte is a unit of information transferred over a network (or stored on a hard drive or in memory). Every web page, image, or other type of file is composed of some number of bytes. Large files, such as video clips, may be composed of millions of bytes ("megabytes"). Since website and server performance is heavily affected by the amount of bytes transferred, and web hosting providers often charge according to this measure, it is very important for site owners to be aware of and understand. One byte is equal to 8 bits where each bit is either a one or zero. Common terms incorporating the word "byte" are:

• Kilobytes - 1,024 bytes
• Megabyte - 1,048,576 bytes
• Gigabyte - 1,073,741,824 bytes

Cache
Cache is a temporary storage area for web browser users to store pages and graphics that have been recently opened. Cache can enable browser to quickly load the same pages and images if they are opened again soon.

Code
Code is anything written in language intended for computers to interpret.

Cookie
Cookie is a message given to web browser by web server. Browser may store the message in a text file called cookie.txt. The message is then sent back to server each time when browser requests a page from server.

The main purpose of cookies is to identify users and prepare customized web pages for them in the case of being required. When you enter a website with using cookies, you may be asked to fill out a form by providing such information as your name and interests. Then such  information is packaged into a cookie and sent to your web browser, and the latter will store it for future use. Next time when you go to the same website, your browser will send the cookie to web server and it can use this information to present you with custom web pages. So, for example, instead of seeing just a generic welcome page you might see a welcome page with your name on it.

 Name cookie derives from UNIX objects called magic cookies, which are tokens that are attached to a user or program and change depending on the areas entered by user or program. Cookies sometimes are also called persistent cookies because they typically stay in browser for long periods of time.

Domain Name System (DNS)
An Internet addressing system uses a group of names which are listed with dots (.) between any two of them, and work from the most specific to the most general group. In the United States, the top (most general) domains are network categories such as edu (education), com (commercial), and gov (government). In other countries, a two-letter abbreviation for a country is used usually, such as ca (Canada) and au (Australia).

Domain Name Lookup

The lookup of a domain name is a process of converting a numeric IP address into a text name, for example, converting 63.212.171.4 to www.quantified.com. (See also Reverse DNS)

Domains
A domain is a specific virtual area within the Internet, defined by "top level" of an address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The top level is the end of an address; For example: the top level part of "whitehouse.gov"is ".gov", which indicating a US government entity. While "whitehouse" is the second-level part of a domain, which indicating within ".gov" domain the information in question is to be found. Other common top-level domains include ".com", ".net", ".uk", etc.

Download
To receive a file or files from a remote machine to your local machine.

E-commerce
A general designation of buying and selling goods and services, or transfer funds, through digital communications, like buying and selling over the WWW, etc.

Encryption
A process of encoding information so that it is kept secure from other Internet users.

End User
The final user of a computer software. End user is the individual who uses  a product after it has been fully developed and marketed.

Error
Errors are defined as that visitors attempted to view pages, but receiving error messages instead. Often such errors occur because of broken links (links to pages that do not exist anymore) or when an unauthorized visitor attempting to access restricted pages (for example, if the visitor does not have a password to access the page).

Firewall
A security device placed on a LAN (local area network) to protect it from Internet intruders. This can be a special kind of hardware router, a piece of software, or both.

Frame
A rectangular region within a browser window that displays a web page alongside other pages in other frames.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
A basic method for copying a file from one computer to another through the Internet.

GIF
File extension for graphics interchange format. A compressed, bitmapped graphics format is often used on web for graphics.

Graphic User Interface (GUI)
Pronounced gooey. A method of controlling software using on-screen icons, menus, dialog boxes, and objects that can be moved or resized, usually with a pointing device such as a mouse.

Hardware
A computer and associated physical equipments which are directly involved in the performance of data-processing or communication functions.

Hits
A hit is any simple request to web server for any type of files, which can be an HTML page, an image (jpeg, gif, png, etc.), a sound clip, a cgi script, or many other file types. An HTML page can account for several hits: the page itself, each image on the page, and any embedded sound or video clips. Therefore, the number of hits a website receives is not a valid and popular gauge, but rather is an using and loading indication of a web server.

HTML
Hyper Text Markup Language is used to write documents for the World Wide Web and to specify hypertext links between related objects and documents.

HTTP
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is a standard method of transferring data between a web server and a web browser.

IP Address
An identifier for a computer or device on a TCP/IP network, or say, an address of web server on the Internet. Networks use TCP/IP protocol route messages which are based on the IP address of destination. The format of an IP address is a numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods. Each number ranges from 0 to 255.

ISP
Internet service provider. A company which provides other companies or individuals with access to, or presence on, the Internet. Most ISPs are also Internet Access Providers -- extra services include help with design, creation and administration of WWW sites, etc.

Java
Object-oriented programming language invented by Sun Microsystems.

JavaScript
Small element of code embedded on web pages and executed by browser when a page is viewed by a visitor.

Keyword
A keyword is a database index entry that can identify a specific record or document. Keyword searching is the most common form of text search on web. Most search engines do their text query and retrieval using keywords.

Unless the author of a web document specifies keywords for his document (this is possible by using meta tags), it's up to search engines to determine. Basically ,  search engines pull out and index words that are believed to be significant and the words that are mentioned towards the top of a document and those that are repeated for several times throughout the document are more likely to be deemed important.

Local Area Network (LAN)
A more-or-less self-contained network of interconnected computers (that may connect to the Internet), usually in a single office or building.

Log file
A file created by a web or proxy server which contains all of the access information regarding the activity on that server.

Meta Tag
A special HTML tag that provides information about a web page. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed. Instead, they provide information such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content. Many search engines use this information when building their indices.

Module
A generic term for self-contained sections of a program that perform a specialized function, such as spelling checking.

Multihome
A multihome, or load balanced network means distributing processing and communications activity evenly across a computer network so that no single device is overwhelmed. Load balancing is especially important for networks where it's difficult to predict the number of requests that will be issued to a server. Busy websites typically employ two or more web servers in a load balancing scheme. If one server starts to get swamped, requests will be forwarded to another server with more capacity.

Navigation
Movement within a computer environment (for example, navigation of a website.)

Network
A set of computers connected so that they can communicate and share information together. Most major networks are connected to the global network-of-networks, called the Internet.

Online
A general term referring to anything connected to or conveyed through a communication network.

Organization
The classification to which a Domain Name belongs.

Typical Suffixes are: .com = Commercial, .org = Organization, .edu = Educational, .int = International, .gov = Government, .mil = Military, .net = Network

OS (Operating System)
Software designed to control the hardware of a specific data-processing system in order to allow users and application programs to employ it easily. (MACOS, Windows 95)

Page
Also known as a web page. A  page is defined as a single file on a web server. For example, a page could be an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) document, an image, a java applet, a CGI script, etc. Any file that is neither a gif nor a jpeg is considered a page.

Page views
A page is defined as any file dished out by a web server that would generally be considered a web document. This includes HTML pages (.html, .htm, .shtml), script-generated pages (.cgi, .asp, .cfm, etc.), and plain-text pages. Image files (.jpeg, .gif, .png, etc.), sound files (.wav, .aiff, etc.), video files (.mov, etc.), and other non-document files are not counted as pages.

PDF
Portable Document Format which developed by Adobe Systems to allow for display and printing of formatted documents across platforms and systems. PDF files can be read on any system equipped with  Acrobat Reader software, regardless of whether or not your computer has the software that the document was created in.

Platforms
A platform is a hardware and software combination that represents a specific user experience and method of accessing the Internet. Common platforms include "Windows NT" (Microsoft Windows NT on a standard Intel-type PC), "MAC PPC" (MACintosh with Power PC processor), Red Hat Linux 6.1 (Linux is a UNIX-like operating system), etc.

Protocol
An established method of exchanging data over the Internet.

Referrals
A referral occurs when a web surfer click a hyperlink which can lead him to any page or file on another website; it could be a text, an image, or any other type of link. When a web surfer arrives at your site from another site, the server records the referral information in hit log for every file requested by that surfer. If a search engine was used to obtain the link, the search engine name and any keywords used are recorded as well.

Referrer
An URL of a HTML page that refers visitors to a site.

Reverse DNS
Name resolution software that looks up an IP address to obtain a domain name. It performs an opposite function to DNS server, which turns domain names into IP addresses.

Robot
A robot is a program that runs automatically without human intervention. Typically, a robot is endowed with some very basic logic so that it can react to different situations it encounters. One common type of robot is a content-indexing spider, or web crawler.

Scalable

The quality of an implementation that allows it to grow as the increase of service .

Script
A short computer program written in a simplified programming language, such as JavaScript, VBScript, or Perl.

Search Engine
A program that searches documents by specified keywords and returns a list of documents in which the keywords are found. Although a search engine is really a general class of program, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Alta Vista and Excite that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web.

Server
A part of network that supplies files and services to clients. A file server is dedicated to storing files, and a print server provides printing for many PCs. A mail server handles mail within a network and with the Internet. A web server is a computer that hosts information available to anyone accessing the Internet.

Software
The programs, routines, and symbolic languages that control the functioning of hardware and direct its operation are called software. Written programs or procedures or rules and associated documentation which pertaining to the operation of a computer system are stored in read/write memory.

Source
Also known as source code. The actual text and commands stored in an HTML file (including tags, comments, and scripts) may not be visible when a page is viewed with web browser.

Spider
A spider is a program that automatically fetches web pages. Spiders are used to feed pages to search engines. They are called spiders because they “crawl” over the web. Because most web pages contain links to other pages, a spider can start almost anywhere. As soon as it sees a link to another page, it goes off and fetches it. Large search engines, like Alta Vista, have many spiders working in parallel.

URL
Uniform Resource Locator is a means of identifying an exact location on the Internet. For example, http://www.colasoft.com/products/index.php is the URL that defines the use of HTTP to access the web page index.php in the /products/ directory on the Colasoft website. URLs typically have four parts: protocol type (HTTP), host domain name (www.colasoft.com), directory path (/products/), and file name (index.php).

User
For the purpose of Colasoft, User is defined as a person within a customer group who has specific report access.

Username
A Username is used to gain access to a computer system. Usernames, and usually passwords, are required in multi-user systems. In most such systems, users can choose their own usernames and passwords.

Visitor
A visitor is defined as a series of hits, with no idle time of 30 minutes or more between any two hits, from a same IP address. Explanation: when a web surfer arrives at your site, he/she requests the files, such as GIFs and JPEGs, that make up a particular page. Each request is a hit, and they are delivered in quick succession, with no more than a few seconds of interval  (from the server's perspective). When Colasoft detects a gap of more than 30 minutes between any two hits from a same IP address, it is assumed that it is a new visitor. This is usually true, since most large ISPs, such as EarthLink, recycle idle IP addresses.