If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you’ve probably heard (or even said yourself) phrases like “clear your cache” or words like “HTTP” and “byte.” But have you ever taken a second to wonder what it all really means?
We know you’ve got lots going on in your day-to-day life…so we did the research and put together a tech terms cheat sheet you can refer to anytime.
Botnet
A portmanteau of “robot” and “network,” botnets are networks of private computers infected with malware and controlled remotely. Botnets are responsible for everything from sending spam to ransomware to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Bit
A bit is the smallest unit of measurement in computing. You’ll usually see it used to refer to internet speeds—as in, 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps). It is abbreviated with a lowercase “b” so as not to be confused with “byte.”
Byte
A byte is a unit of measurement in computing typically used for data storage capacity, abbreviated with an uppercase “B.” Eight bits equal one byte. You’ll usually see it used to refer to data storage capacity or bandwidth—as in, this hard drive is 1 TB (terabyte).
Cache
Cache refers to website data temporarily stored on your computer. For example, when you visit a webpage, the data (website copy, embedded images, etc.) will be “cached” on your computer. So, the next time you visit that page, it’ll load faster, because instead of having to re-download the data from the web server, your browser simply pulls it from your device.
Domain Name System (DNS)
This one requires a little history lesson. Computers communicate using a series of numbers—so in the early ages of the internet, you had to know the Internet Protocol (IP) address of a website if you wanted to visit it. That means you had to remember a long string of numbers (123.45.67.890, for instance) for every website you liked to frequent.
Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? Fortunately, that changed in the early 1980s, when DNS was developed. Think of DNS as the phonebook of the internet. It converts easy-to-read domain names—such as luminatebroadband.com—into the corresponding IP address your computer uses to find and access the server hosting our website.
Emoji
Emojis are the tiny pictures or icons used in text-based communication to convey an emotion or tone. For example: 😂 💅 👀
Emoticon
An emoticon is similar to an emoji—but it uses characters found on your keyboard to represent an emotion or image. For example: =) <3 T_T
HTTP
HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. Put simply, HTTP is the process used to connect your web browser to a website server and download the data so you can see the website.
You’ll see HTTP or HTTPS (the encrypted version) before the URL of every website (e.g., https://www.luminatebroadband.com), but it’s not something you need to type in. Your browser will automatically add it for you.
Zombie
A zombie refers to a computer that has been infected with a virus that controls the computer—often without the user’s knowledge. Zombies then further spread this virus by sending infected data to other computers en masse, making it difficult to trace the virus back to the source.
When you have questions, we have answers.
At Luminate Broadband we value our role as your trusted advisor when it comes to making the most of our internet services. Whether you’re wondering about the difference between megabits and megabytes or considering upgrading your service, our friendly team is here to help. Give us a call anytime at 970-870-4320. We’d love to hear from you.
