ACK | Acknowledgment |
ACL | Access Control List |
ADSL | Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line |
AOL | America Online, Inc., an ISP |
API | Application Programming Interface |
ARP | Address Resolution Protocol |
ASCII | American Standard Code for Information Interchange |
BDAM | Basic Damn Access Method (humorous) |
BeroFTPD | Bero's File Transfer Program Daemon |
BIND | Berkeley Internet Name Daemon |
BIOS | Basic I/O System |
BSD | Berkeley Software Distribution [of UNIX] |
CD-ROM | Compact Disk-Read Only Memory |
CD-RW | Compact Disk-Read/Write |
CERT | Computer Emergency Response Team |
CGI | Common Gateway Interface |
CIAC | Computer Incident Advisory Capability |
CIFS | Common Internet File Service; Microsoft proprietary standard |
CNN | Cable News Network, a U.S. cable news service |
CPU | Central Processing Unit, for example, microprocessor |
DB | Database |
DDoS | Distributed Denial of Service attack |
DES | U.S. government's Data Encryption Standard |
DHCP | Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol |
DISA | U.S. government's Defense Information Systems Agency |
DMZ | Demilitarized Zone |
DNS | Domain Name Service |
DOD | U.S. Department of Defense |
DOJ | U.S. Department of Justice [government prosecutor] |
DOL | U.S. Department of Labor |
DOS | Microsoft's Disk Operating System |
DoS | Denial of Service attack |
DSL | Digital Subscriber Line |
DTK | Deception Tool Kit |
EOF | End of File |
FAA | U.S. Federal Aviation Administration |
FAQ | Frequently Asked Questions |
FBI | U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation |
FSCK | File System Consistency checK |
FSF | Free Software Foundation |
FTP | File Transfer Protocol |
FTPD | File Transfer Program Daemon |
FUD | Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, for example, marketing lies |
GB | Gigabytes [1 billion bytes] |
GID | Group ID [number] |
GNU | GNU's Not UNIX |
GPL | GNU General Public License |
HTML | HyperText Markup Language |
HTTP | HyperText Transport Protocol |
IANA | Internet Assigned Numbers Authority |
ICMP | Internet Control Message Protocol |
IDE | Integrated Device (or Drive) Electronics |
IDS | Intrusion Detection System |
IETF | Internet Engineering Task Force |
IMAP | Internet Message Access Protocol |
IP | Internet Protocol |
IPO | Initial Public Offering [of stock] |
IRC | Internet Relay Chat |
ISAM | Intrinsically Slow Access Method[1] |
ISDN | Integrated Services Digital Network [64 kilobaud] |
ISO | International Standards Organization |
ISP | Internet Service Provider, e.g., AOL or EarthLink |
LAN | Local Area Network |
LBL | U.S. government's Lawrence Berkeley Lab |
LDAP | Lightweight Directory Access Protocol |
LILO | LInux LOader [boot program] |
MAC | Media Access Control [e.g., Ethernet address] |
MB | Megabytes [1 million bytes] |
MBR | Master Boot Record |
MCP | Master Control Program [see TRON, the movie] |
MD5 | Message Digest Algorithm [hashing algorithm] |
MHz | Millions of cycles per second |
MIME | Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions |
MIS | Management Information Service |
MX | Mail eXchange record |
NASDAQ | A U.S. stock exchange |
NAT | Network Address Translation [IP Masquerading] |
NFS | Sun's Network File System |
NIC | Network Interface Card |
NIS | Network Information Service [renamed from Yellow Pages] |
NMAP | Network MAPper |
NNTP | Network News Transfer Protocol |
NSA | National Security Agency |
NT | Microsoft's "New Technology" Windows |
OS | Operating System |
PAM | Pluggable Authentication Module |
PC | Personal Computer |
PGP | Pretty Good Privacy [encryption standard} |
PID | Linux Process ID [number] |
PK | Public Key |
PKI | Public Key Infrastructure |
POP | Post Office Protocol |
POP3 | POP version 3 |
PPP | Point to Point Protocol [IP over serial] |
QA | Quality Assurance |
RAID | Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks [invented at UC Berkeley] |
RAM | Random Access Memory [main memory] |
RAMDISK | An R/W file system in RAM |
RARP | Reverse Address Resolution Protocol |
RFC | Request For Comments [Internet specification] |
RH | Red Hat |
RPC | Sun's Remote Procedure Call facility |
RPM | Red Hat Package Manager |
RSA | Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and L. Adleman; popular PK encryption |
SAMBA | Free SMB client and server |
SCSI | Small Computer System Interface |
SMB | Server Message Block [Microsoft's answer to NFS] |
SMTP | Simple Mail Transfer Protocol [sendmail] |
SNMP | Simple Network Management Protocol |
SQL | Standard Query Language [for databases] |
SSH | Secure SHell |
SSL | Secure Socket Layer |
T1 | 1.544 megabaud communications line |
T3 | 44.736 megabaud communications line |
TB | Terabyte [1 million megabytes] |
TCP | Transmission Control Protocol |
TFN | Tribe Flood Network [a DDoS] |
TOS | The Original Series [Star Trek] |
UDP | User Datagram Protocol |
UID | User ID [number] |
UPS | Uninterruptible Power Supply |
URL | Uniform Resource Locator |
UUCP | UNIX to UNIX Copy Program [UNIX Usenet communications program] |
VPN | Virtual Private Network |
WU-FTPD | Washington University File Transfer Program Daemon |
WWW | World Wide Web |