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M

MAC Address Meda Access Control Address
A MAC address is a hardware identification number that uniquely identifies each device on a network. The MAC address is manufactured into every network card, such as an Ethernet card or Wi-Fi card, and therefore cannot be changed.

MAC addresses are made up of six two-digit hexadecimal numbers, separated by colons. For example, an Ethernet card may have a MAC address of 09:5D:20:E0:26:56.

Malware Malicious Software
Software designed specifically to damage or disrupt a system.  Common examples of malware include viruses, worms, trojan horses, and spyware.

Mbps Megabits Per Second
One megabit is equal to one million bits or 1,000 kilobits. While “megabit” sounds similar to “megabyte,” a megabit is roughly one eighth the size of a megabyte (since there are eight bits in a byte). Mbps is used to measure data transfer speeds of high bandwidth connections, such as Ethernet and cable modems.

Meta Tag
A HTML tag that provides information about a Web page. 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.  Meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed.

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface
It is a connectivity standard that musicians use to hook together musical instruments (such as keyboards and synthesizers) and computer equipment. Using MIDI, a musician can easily create and edit digital music tracks. The MIDI system records the notes played, the length of the notes, the dynamics (volume alterations), the tempo, the instrument being played, and hundreds of other parameters, called control changes.

MySQL My S-Q-L or My Sequel
An open source relational database management system. It is based on the Structure Query Language (SQL), which is used for adding, removing, and modifying information in the database. Standard SQL commands, such as ADD, DROP, INSERT, and UPDATE can be used with MySQL.

MySQL can be used for a variety of applications, but is most commonly found on Web servers.

N

NetBIOS Network Basic Input/Output System
It provides an interface between the computer’s operating system and the hardware. As the name implies, NetBIOS adds support for networking, including the ability to recognise other devices connected to the network.  It was introduced in 1983 by IBM as an improvement to the standard BIOS used by Windows-based computers.

NNTP Network News Transfer Protocol
It is basically the software foundation of a newsgroup server. It is what queries, distributes, posts, and retrieves news articles.

NTFS New Technology File System
A file system introduced by Microsoft with Windows NT and is supported by subsequent versions of Windows, such as XP, Vista and Windows 2003 Server editions. NTFS has a number of advantages over the older file system (FAT or File Allocation Table). One major advantage of NTFS is that it incorporates features to improve reliability such as fault tolerance, which repairs hard drive errors without displaying error messages. It also keeps detailed transaction logs, which tracks hard drive errors.

O

OCR Optical Character Recognition
When a page of text is scanned into a computer without OCR software, all the computer sees is an image. It has no idea that there is text on the page, much less what the text says. However, an OCR program can convert the characters on the page into a text document that can be read by a word processing program. More advanced OCR programs can even keep the formatting of the document in the conversion.

ODBC Open Database Connectivity
With all the different types of databases available, such as Microsoft Access, Filemaker, and MySQL, it is important to have a standard way of transferring data to and from each kind of database. For this reason, the SQL Access group created the ODBC standard. Any application that supports ODBC can access information from an ODBC-compatible database, regardless of what database management system the database uses.

OLE Object Linking and Embedding
Pronounced “O-L-E” or “Oh-lay”. OLE is a framework developed by Microsoft that allows you to take objects from a document in one application and place them in another. For example, OLE may allow you to move an image from a photo-editing program into a word processing document.

The OLE technology was initially created to allow the linking of objects between “compound documents,” or documents that support multiple types of data. Microsoft has since developed OLE into a wider standard, known as the Component Object Model (COM). COM is supported by Mac, Unix, and Windows systems, but is primarily used with Microsoft Windows. The COM framework is the foundation of ActiveX, which allows developers to create interactive content for the Web.

OSPF Open Shortest Path First
A method of finding the shortest path from one router to another in a LAN. As long as a network is IP-based, the OSPF algorithm will calculate the most efficient way for data to be transmitted.

If there are several routers on a network, OSPF builds a table (or topography) of the router connections. When data is sent from one location to another, the OSPF algorithm compares the available options and chooses the most efficient way for the data to be sent. This limits unnecessary delays in data transmission.

P

PCB Printed Circuit Board
A PCB is a thin board made of fiberglass or similar material. Electrical wires are “printed” onto the board, connecting the central processor to other components on the board. Some examples of PCBs include motherboards, RAM chips, and network interface cards.

Printed circuit boards are sometimes abbreviated as “PC boards,” which is fitting, since the boards are commonly used in personal computers. However, PCBs are also found in other types of electronic devices, such as radios, televisions, and computer monitors.

PCI Peripheral Component Interconnect
A hardware bus designed by Intel and used in both PCs and Macs. Most add-on cards such as SCSI, Firewire, and USB controllers, use a PCI connection. Years ago, graphics cards used PCI slots, but most new graphics cards connect to either an AGP slot or more common today, a PCI Express slot.  PCI slots are found on your mainboard and are generally white in color.

PCMCIA Personal Computer Memory Card International Association
This way-to-long acronym stands for an association founded in 1989 which develops standards for expansion cards for portable computers. However, the term is most commonly associated with the actual cards standardized by the organization. These cards are referred to as “PCMCIA cards,” or simply “PC cards.” There are three types of PCMCIA cards, all of which are rectangular and measure 8.56 by 5.4 cm., but have different widths:

- Type I: up to 3.3 mm. thick, mainly used to add additional ROM or RAM.
- Type II: up to 5.5 mm. thick, typically used for fax/modem cards.
- Type III: up to 10.5 mm. thick, often used to attach portable disk drives.

PCMCIA slots also come in three sizes — a Type I slot can hold one Type I card, a Type II slot can hold one Type II card or two Type I cards, and a Type III slot can hold one Type III card or one Type I and one Type II card.

PHP Hypertext Preprocessor
PHP is an HTML-embedded Web scripting language. This means PHP code can be inserted into the HTML of a Web page. When a PHP page is accessed, the PHP code is read or “parsed” by the server the page resides on. The output from the PHP functions on the page are typically returned as HTML code, which can be read by the browser. Because the PHP code is transformed into HTML before the page is loaded, users cannot view the PHP code on a page. This make PHP pages secure enough to access databases and other secure information.

A lot of the syntax of PHP is borrowed from other languages such as C, Java and Perl. However, PHP has a number of unique features and specific functions as well. The goal of the language is to allow Web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly and easily. PHP is also great for creating database-driven Web sites.

PPP Point to Point Protocol
It is the Internet standard for dial-up modem connections. PPP is a set of rules that defines how your modem exchanges packets of data with other systems on the Internet. If you connect to your ISP with a dial-up modem, you are most likely using PPP.

PPTP Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol
PPTP is a networking standard for connecting to virtual private networks, or VPNs. VPNs are secure networks that can be accessed over the Internet, allowing users to access a network from a remote location. This is useful for people who need to connect to an office network from home or access their home computer from another location.

The “point-to-point” part of the term refers the connection created by PPTP. It allows one point (the user’s computer) to access another specific point (a remote network) over the Internet. The “tunneling” part of the term refers to the way one protocol is encapsulated within another protocol. In PPTP, the point-to-point protocol (PPP) is wrapped inside the TCP/IP protocol, which provides the Internet connection. Therefore, even though the connection is created over the Internet, the PPTP connection mimics a direct link between the two locations, allowing for a secure connection.

Some definitions provided courtesy of Tech Terms.