Explanation of some common IT terms and acronyms

Website - Web hosting - Web server - Domain name - Internet - Intranet

A website is collection or set of related electronic documents or web pages containing content (text, audio, video, images etc). These documents or information are stored or hosted on a web server. This server is a computer which has the necessary hardware and software to run the hosting service. The server is accessed through a network such as the Internet (public) or Intranet (private) through a unique name or internet address called the domain name or the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), for example yourcompany.com.

Network - LAN - WAN - ISP

A computer network is a collection of computers and hardware components/peripherals which are linked together by some communication channel (cable, wireless) to share information and resources. When these computers are connected within a limited geographical area such as an office or a home, it is refered to as a Local Area Network or LAN. When the geographical area is larger, the network becomes a Wide Area Network or WAN. The communication channel in this case is usually provided by a carrier or Service Provider like a telephone company or an Internet Service Provider or ISP.

VLAN - VPN

A single LAN can be logically split up into different subsets or subnets in order to control data flow over the data link. This results to Virtual LANs or VLANs. A network administrator can do this for several reasons, usually to improve data traffic on the physical network. Another scenario could be where there are two branch offices located in different geographical areas and are connectecd over a WAN link. In this case, a virtual tunnel could be configured over the public WAN link connecting the two branches as if they were on a single private network. Information could then be encrypted and transmitted securely over this WAN link permiting a user in one branch office to easily access resources in the other branch office as if the two were physically connected. This is called a Virtual Private Network or VPN.