- Packet
- A packet is a standardized unit of data. In network communications a
packet generally consists of a "header" with identifying information and
a "body" containing the data to be transmitted.
- Palmtop
- Palmtops are a class of personal computers (generally with
PDA software) that fit in the palm of your hand. One
of the most well-known palmtops is the
Pilot, developed by PalmOS and marketed
by US Robotics.
- Parallel
- Parallel data communications send several
bits over the connection (usually multiple
physical wires) at once, as opposed to
serial links which send one bit at a time.
Parallel connections are generally used for printers and for some high
speed data connections.
- PASC
- The Portable Application Standards Committee,
PASC is charted by
IEEE to define stardard application service
interfaces, primarily for
POSIX.
- PBX
- Private Branch Exchange.
A privately-owned telephone switch, often used in large corporations to
provide inside telephone connectivity and access to the
PSTN.
- PEM
- Privacy Enhanced Mail, a standard for the transparent processing of
authenticated and/or encrypted
electronic mail messages.
- PDA
- Acronym for Personal Digital Assistant, a general term for any
portable computer and software capable of tracking names, addresses,
phone numbers and appointments.
PDA's are generally classified according to size into
palmtops, handhelds, and laptops.
- PGP
- Pretty Good Privacy, the world's
most widely used encryption software package.
- PH
- Acronym for PHonebook, a PH client program can be used to access a
networked telephone book, such as
QI
(CCSO Nameserver) database.
QI databases are generally
used to store phone books, timetables, and other forms of public information
for remote network access.
- PIM
- A small furry animal which lives in Terra del Fuego. Difficult
to hunt, due to its nocturnal habit, the Pim is worth the chase.
Although a full grown pim dresses out at under two ounces, a dozen make
a tasty treat. Natives of Terra del Fuego often eat nothing else but
pimburgers during the long cold summers in this wind swept land.
See also
PDA.
(ed_black)
- Ping
- A network program
which sends UDP packets to a host, and listens for responses.
Used to check if a machine on the
Internet
is alive and reachable, and measure the Round Trip Time (RTT) between the
local and remote host.
See also
traceroute.
- Pixel
The smallest individually controllable element of a video or printed
image. A digital image is composed of an array of individual pixels, each
of which is assigned a value determining the color or brightness.
- Platform
- The basic system on which applications execute, a platform can refer to
the processor and low-level support chips, as in 'this runs on both
Sparc and Intel platforms' or a complete operating system, such as the many
games that will only run on the 'Microsoft Windows 95' platform.
- POP
- Acronym for
Post Office Protocol, an extensible protocol for
retrieving mail from a remote server.
Described in
RFC number
1081, and extended in
1460, and
1725.
See also:
See Popmail,
IMAP, and
QWK
- Popmail
- A program used to remotely read e-mail across a network, often used in
conjunction with
SLIP.
Uses the POP protocol.
- PPP
- An acronym for Point-to-Point-Protocol,
an advanced serial packet protocol similar to
SLIP.
- POSIX
- Originally POSICE for Portable Operating System Interface for Computer
Environments, POSIX is developed under
pasc.
(rezidew)
- Protocol
- Any standard for the exchange of information, a protocol defines the
specific wording and control flow for communications between two or more
programs, devices, or systems.
(anonymous)
- Proxy
- A proxy is somebody you delegate to do something for you, in the
Internet, a 'proxy web server' is often used for hosts behind
firewalls.
The firewalled host sends a
http
request to the proxy server, which forwards it to the real web server outside,
collects the response, and passes it back to the internal host.
- PSTN
- Public Switched Telephone Network.
Often used to refer to the entire national or global telephone infrastructure,
this is more accurately used to refer to the local telephone service provider.