BASIC

Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use.

b-blog

Short for Business BLOG, a blog used by a business to promote itself.

b-channel

Short for Bearer-channel, the main data channel in an ISDN connection. Basic Rate ISDN (BRI) service consists of two 64 Kbps B-channels, and one D-channel for transmitting control information. Primary ISDN service consists of 23 B-channels (in the U.S.) or 30 B-channels (in Europe).

B-ISDN

Broadband ISDN, is a standard for transmitting voice, video, and data at the same time over fiber optic telephone lines. It can support data rates of 1.5 Mbps. It has not been widely implemented.

B2B

Business-to-business. Transactions between businesses on the internet, e.g. commodity exchanges.

B2C

Business-to-consumer. Transactions between businesses and individual consumers.

Backbone

The main network connections at the heart of the internet.

Backdoor

A backdoor is a typically covert method of bypassing normal authentication or encryption in a computer, product, or embedded device.

Backlink

Backlinks are links from a page on one website to another. If someone links to your site, then you have a backlink from them. If you link to another website, then they have a backlink from you. More backlinks your website has, the better SEO it wil have.

Back End

The programming and technology that lies behind the web page that a user sees on their screen, for example enabling them to buy and sell on-line.

Bandwidth

The amount of data a connection can transfer over a fixed period of time.

Banner Ad

An advertisement strip at the top or bottom of a webpage.

Baud

Term used to describe the amount of oscillations of a sound wave.

Baud Barf

When a modem connection does not have the correct protocol setting, and the user sees gibberish on the screen.

Baud Rate

The amount of oscillations a modem can transmit and receive in 1 second.

BBS

Bulletin Board System or Service. An electronic message center, where people can review and post messages on a variety of subjects.

BEDO DRAM

Burst EDO DRAM, a new type of EDO DRAM that can process four memory addresses in one burst. Unlike SDRAM, however, BEDO DRAM can only stay synchronized with the CPU clock for short periods (bursts). Also, it can't keep up with processors whose buses run faster than 66 MHz.

BeiDou

The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System is a Chinese satellite navigation system.

Beta Bugs

Any problem that is found with a beta version of a piece of software or hardware.

Beta Testing

2nd phase of testing, for a pre-release version of software, hardware etc.

Beyond The Banner

A Web marketing term that implies that there are ways of marketing on the Internet other than the typical use of an ad banner.

BGMP

Border Gateway Multicast Protocol, is a network protocol that runs on port 264.

BGP

Border Gateway Protocol, an Internet protocol, operating on port 179, that enables groups of routers (called autonomous systems) to share routing information so that efficient, loop-free routes can be established.

BICSI

Building Industry Consulting Services, International. It was formed in the early 1970's by a group of people who worked for the Bell operating companies. In the early 1990's, BICSI decided to simply refer to themselves as "BICSI: A Telecommunications Association".

BIM

Building Information Modeling, is a process involving the generation and management of digital representations of physical and functional characteristics of places. Building information models are files which can be extracted, exchanged or networked to support decision-making regarding a building or other built asset.

Biometrics

Biometrics is the technical term for body measurements and calculations. It refers to metrics related to human characteristics.

BIOS

Basic Input/Output System. The BIOS is built-in software that determines what a computer can do without accessing programs from a disk. On PCs, the BIOS contains all the code required to control the keyboard, display screen, disk drives, serial communications, and a number of miscellaneous functions.

Bit

A Binary digit, the smallest unit of data forming the basis of all digital systems. Can hold two values: either 1 or 0.

Bit Bucket

The destination in cyberspace for lost or missing e-mails.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment system; it is the first decentralized digital currency. Often used on the dark web.

Bitlegging

The theft of online ideas or thoughts.

BitTorrent

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol designed to reduce the bandwidth required to transfer files. It does this by distributing file transfers across multiple systems, thereby lessening the average bandwidth used by each computer.

Black Hat

Someone who hacks into a website or system with the intent to do damage.

Blackberry

A line of mobile email devices and services. BlackBerry is a complete package that includes airtime, software and choice of BlackBerry mobile devices. In the UK, BlackBerry works over GPRS networks.

Blatherer

Someone who types much more than is necessary, particularly in the context of newsgroups and chat rooms.

Block Error Rate

In data communications testing, block error rate is defined as the ratio between the total number of blocks transmitted in a given message and the number of blocks in that message received in error; a measure of the quality of a data transmission.

Blockchain

Blockchain is a type of distributed ledger for maintaining a permanent and tamper-proof record of transactional data. Blockchain is a critical part of the bitcoin peer-to-peer payment system.

blog

(n.) Short for Web log. A blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly-accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.
(v.) To author a Web log.

Bluetooth

It refers to a short-range radio technology aimed at simplifying communications among Net devices and between devices and the Internet.

Boil The Ocean

To attempt something over-ambitious or impossible on the internet.

Boilerplate

Text or graphics elements designed to be used over and over. For example, you could create a boilerplate for a fax message that contains all the standard fax information that doesn't change, such as your name, address, and phone number. Then whenever you want to create a new fax, you need only insert the boilerplate rather than retyping the information. A boilerplate is similar to a template, but whereas a template holds layout and style information, a boilerplate contains actual text or graphics. Many applications, however, combine the two concepts.

BOINC

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, an open-source middleware system, supports volunteer and grid computing.

BOOTP

Short for Bootstrap Protocol, an Internet protocol that enables a diskless workstation to discover its own IP address, the IP address of a BOOTP server on the network, and a file to be loaded into memory to boot the machine. This enables the workstation to boot without requiring a hard or floppy disk drive. The protocol is defined by RFC 951.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is a free and open-source CSS framework directed at responsive, mobile-first front-end web development.

BOT

Any sort of automated software that covers a wide range of programmes.

BOTNET

A network of computers infected by malware used to send out spam or DDoS attacks.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is an Internet marketing term used in web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site.

Bozo Filter

A program that screens out e-mail and newsgroups postings from those who are on a user's b-list.

BPDU

Bridge Protocol Data Unit. BPDUs are data messages that are exchanged across the switches within an extended LAN that uses a STP topology. BPDU packets contain information on ports, addresses, priorities and costs and ensure that the data ends up where it was intended to go.

BPMN

Business Process Model and Notation, is a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a business process model.

bps

Bits per second. A measurement of the transmission of data.

Bread Crumbs

A Web site navigation technique. Bread crumbs typically appear horizontally near the top of a Web page, providing links back to each previous page that the user navigates through in order to get to the current page. Basically, they provide a trail for the user to follow back to the starting/entry point of a Web site and may look something like this:
home page --> section page --> sub section page This technique also is referred to as a bread crumb trail.

BREW

Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless, an open-source on-line application development platform for wireless CDMA devices.

BRI

Basic-Rate Interface, the basic ISDN configuration, which consists of 2 B-channels and 1 D-channel.
See PRI.

Bricks and Mortar

A company that has an established business in the high street.

Bridge

A network device that connects two local-area networks (LANs), or two segments of the same LAN that use the same protocol, such as Ethernet or Token-Ring.

Broadband

In general usage, a fast connection to the internet, so called because a fast connection requires a wide bandwidth capacity. Broadband connections allow applications such as high-quality video streaming over the internet and video on demand. The term is usually applied to connections of 256kbps and above, although strictly a connection from 64kbps - 1.5Mbps is 'wideband', while connections above 1.5MBps are broadband. Anthing less than 64kbps (i.e. a modem) is 'narrowband'.

Broadcast

To simultaneously send the same message to multiple recipients. Broadcasting is a useful feature in e-mail systems. It is also supported by some fax systems. In networking, a distinction is made between broadcasting and multicasting. Broadcasting sends a message to everyone on the network whereas multicasting sends a message to a select list of recipients.

Broadcast Storm

A state in which a message that has been broadcast across a network results in even more responses, and each response results in still more responses in a snowball effect. A severe broadcast storm can block all other network traffic, resulting in a network meltdown. Broadcast storms can usually be prevented by carefully configuring a network to block illegal broadcast messages.

Browser

Short for Web browser, a software application used to locate and display Web pages. The two most popular browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Both of these are graphical browsers, which means that they can display graphics as well as text. In addition, most modern browsers can present multimedia information, including sound and video, though they require plug-ins for some formats.

Browser Hijacking

When your browser is forced to look at another home page and you can't reset it.

BTDT

Been There Done That.

Bubble Sort

Bubble sort, sometimes referred to as sinking sort, is a simple sorting algorithm that repeatedly steps through the list, compares adjacent elements and swaps them if they are in the wrong order. The pass through the list is repeated until the list is sorted.

Buffer

(n) A temporary storage area, usually in RAM. The purpose of most buffers is to act as a holding area, enabling the CPU to manipulate data before transferring it to a device. Because the processes of reading and writing data to a disk are relatively slow, many programs keep track of data changes in a buffer and then copy the buffer to a disk.

(v) To move data into a temporary storage area.

Buffer Overflow

A buffer overflow occurs when a program or process tries to store more data in a buffer (temporary data storage area) than it was intended to hold. Since buffers are created to contain a finite amount of data, the extra information - which has to go somewhere - can overflow into adjacent buffers, corrupting or overwriting the valid data held in them. Although it may occur accidentally through programming error, buffer overflow is an increasingly common type of security attack on data integrity. In buffer overflow attacks, the extra data may contain codes designed to trigger specific actions, in effect sending new instructions to the attacked computer that could, for example, damage the user's files, change data, or disclose confidential information. Buffer overflow attacks are said to have arisen because the programming language supplied the framework, and poor programming practices supplied the vulnerability.

Bus

(1) A collection of wires through which data is transmitted from one part of a computer to another. You can think of a bus as a highway on which data travels within a computer. When used in reference to personal computers, the term bus usually refers to internal bus. This is a bus that connects all the internal computer components to the CPU and main memory. There's also an expansion bus that enables expansion boards to access the CPU and memory. All buses consist of two parts -- an address bus and a data bus. The data bus transfers actual data whereas the address bus transfers information about where the data should go. The size of a bus, known as its width, is important because it determines how much data can be transmitted at one time. Every bus has a clock speed measured in MHz.

(2) In networking, a bus is a central cable that connects all devices on a local-area network. It is also called the backbone.

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence, comprises the tools, strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis of an organization to create informative and actionable business information.

Buzzword

A term used to describe a word or phrase that is frequently used and trendy yet never really has a clear definition and often takes on additional meaning over time.

BYOC

Bring Your Own Computer.

BYOD

Bring Your Own Device.

Byte

A series of 8 bits treated as a single value.

Bytecode

The compiled format for Java programs. Once a Java program has been converted to bytecode, it can be transferred across a network and executed by JVM. Bytecode files generally have a .class extension.