W3C

World Wide Web Consortium is a group of organisations that exists to develop standards and enhance the WWW.

WAI

Web Accessibility Initiative, an initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium launched in 1997 to ensure that as the Internet grows in usage Web sites are designed to accommodate people with disabilities.

WAIS

Wide Area Information Server, is a system that allows users to retrieve content on the Internet by using natural language searches and indexed searches.

Walled Garden

On the Internet, a walled garden refers to a browsing environment that controls the information and Web sites the user is able to access. This is a popular method used by ISP in order to keep the user navigating only specific areas of the Web, whether for the purpose of shielding users from information -- such as restricting children's access to pornography -- or directing users to paid content that the ISP supports. America Online is a good example of an ISP that places users in a walled garden. Schools are increasingly using the walled garden approach in creating browsing environments in their networks. Students have access to only limited Web sites, and teachers need a password in order to leave the walled garden and browse the Internet in its entirety.
The term walled garden also commonly refers to the content that wireless devices such as mobile phones have access to if the content provided by the wireless carrier is limited.

WAN

Wide Area Network. A network covering a large geographical distance, usually involving computers connected over long-distance communications systems such as telephone lines. May comprise one or more LANs.

WAP

Wireless Application Protocol. Allows users to access parts of the internet via various wireless media such as mobile phones, pagers and two-way radios.

Warchalking

The act of making chalk marks on outdoor surfaces (walls, sidewalks, buildings, sign posts, trees) to indicate the existence of an open wireless network connection, usually offering an Internet connection so that others can benefit from the free wireless access. The open connections typically come from the access points of wireless networks located within buildings to serve enterprises. The chalk symbols indicate the type of access point that is available at that specific spot. There are three basic designs that are currently used: a pair of back-to-back semicircles, which denotes an open node; a closed circle, which denotes a closed node; a closed circle with a “W” inside, which denotes a node equipped with WEP. Warchalkers also draw identifiers above the symbols to indicate the password that can be used to access the node, which can easily be obtained with sniffer software.

WCDMA

Wideband Code-Division Multiple Access, a high-speed 3G mobile wireless technology with the capacity to offer higher data speeds than CDMA. WCDMA can reach speeds of up to 2 Mbps for voice, video, data and image transmission. WCDMA was adopted as a standard by the ITU under the name "IMT-2000 direct spread.".

We-Commerce

A joint e-commerce venture entered into by more than one person.

Web Beacon

Also called a Web bug or a clear GIF. Used in combination with cookies, a Web beacon is an often-transparent graphic image, usually no larger than 1 pixel x 1 pixel, that is placed on a Web site or in an e-mail that is used to monitor the behavior of the user visiting the Web site or sending the e-mail. When the HTML code for the Web beacon points to a site to retrieve the image, at the same time it can pass along information such as the IP address of the computer that retrieved the image, the time the Web beacon was viewed and for how long, the type of browser that retrieved the image and previously set cookie values. Web beacons are typically used by a third-party to monitor the activity of a site. A Web beacon can be detected by viewing the source code of a Web page and looking for any IMG tags that load from a different server than the rest of the site. Turning off the browser's cookies will prevent Web beacons from tracking the user's activity. The Web beacon will still account for an anonymous visit, but the user's unique information will not be recorded.

Web Casting

Using the Internet, and the World Wide Web in particular, to broadcast information. Unlike typical surfing, which relies on a pull method of transferring Web pages, webcasting uses push technologies.

Web Crawler

Also known as a spider.

WECA

Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, an organisation made up of leading wireless equipment and software providers with the mission of guaranteeing interoperability of wi-fi products and to promote Wi-Fi as the global wireless LAN standard across all markets.

WEEE

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. There is a Directive on WEEE, it is the European Community Directive 2012/19/EU on waste electrical and electronic equipment which, together with the RoHS Directive 2011/65/EU, became European Law in February 2003.

WEP

Wired Equivalent Privacy, a security protocol for WLANs defined in the 802.11b standard. WEP is designed to provide the same level of security as that of a wired LAN. LANs are inherently more secure than WLANs because LANs are somewhat protected by the physicalities of their structure, having some or all part of the network inside a building that can be protected from unauthorized access. WLANs, which are over radio waves, do not have the same physical structure and therefore are more vulnerable to tampering. WEP aims to provide security by encrypting data over radio waves so that it is protected as it is transmitted from one end point to another. However, it has been found that WEP is not as secure as once believed. WEP is used at the two lowest layers of the OSI model - the data link and physical layers; it therefore does not offer end-to-end security.

WFH

Working From Home.

White Hat

Someone who is paid to hack into computer systems to check the security.

Whitelist

A whitelist is a list of e-mail addresses or domain names from which an e-mail blocking program will allow messages to be received.

wi-fi

wireless fidelity and is another name for IEEE 802.11b. It is a trade term promulgated by WECA. Products certified as Wi-Fi by WECA are interoperable with each other even if they are from different manufacturers. A user with a Wi-Fi product can use any brand of access point with any other brand of client hardware that is built to the Wi-Fi standard.

wi-fi5

Refers to WLAN products based on the IEEE 802.11a specification that operate in the 5 GHz radio frequency band. Only products that have passed WECA's interoperability testing are allowed to display the Wi-Fi5 certification logo.

WiMAX

WiMAX is a wireless industry coalition whose members organised to advance IEEE 802.16 standards for broadband wireless access networks. WiMAX was formed in 2001.

WINS

Windows Internet Naming Service, a system that determines the IP address associated with a particular network computer. This is called name resolution. WINS supports network client and server computers running Windows and can provide name resolution for other computers with special arrangements. Determining the IP address for a computer is a complex process when DHCP servers assign IP addresses dynamically. For example, it is possible for DHCP to assign a different IP address to a client each time the machine logs on to the network. WINS uses a distributed database that is automatically updated with the names of computers currently available and the IP address assigned to each one. DNS is an alternative system for name resolution suitable for network computers with fixed IP addresses.

WIPO

World Intellectual Property Organisation, is a specialised UN agency formed to protect intellectual property worldwide.

WLAN

Wireless Local Area Network. A type of local-area network that uses high-frequency radio waves rather than wires to communicate between nodes. Also referred to as LAWN.

WLL

Wireless Local Loop. Any method of using wireless communication in place of a wired connection to provide subscribers with standard telephone service.

WML

Wireless Markup Language, an XML language used to specify content and user interface for WAP devices; the WAP forum provides a DTD for WML.

WOPR

War Operation Plan Response, computer in the film WarGames.

World Wide Web

One of the systems making up the internet. A collection of servers providing documents formatted in HTML known as web pages. The system is normally navigated using a web browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.

Worm

(1) A program or algorithm that replicates itself over a computer network and usually performs malicious actions, such as using up the computer's resources and possibly shutting the system down.

(2) Write Once, Read Many. An optical disk technology that allows you to write data onto a disk just once. After that, the data is permanent and can be read any number of times. WORM is also called CD-R.

WPA

Wifi Protected Access, WPA2 and WPA3 are security protocols for wireless computer networks. Higher the standard, higher the security.

WRAM

Windows RAM, a type of RAM developed by Samsung Electronics that supports two ports. This enables a video adapter to fetch the contents of memory for display at the same time that new bytes are being pumped into memory. This results in much faster display than is possible with conventional single-port RAM. WRAM is similar to VRAM, but achieves even faster performance at less cost because it supports addressing of large blocks (windows) of video memory.

WSDL

Web Services Description Language, an XML-formatted language used to describe a Web service's capabilities as collections of communication endpoints capable of exchanging messages. WSDL is an integral part of UDDI, an XML-based worldwide business registry.

WTLS

Wireless Transport Layer Security. WTLS is the security layer of the WAP, providing privacy, data integrity and authentication for WAP services.

WURFL

Wireless Universal Resource FiLe, is a set of proprietary APIs and an XML configuration file which contains information about device capabilities and features for a variety of mobile devices, focused on mobile device detection.

WYGIWYPF

What You Get is What You Pay For.

WYSIWYG

What You See Is What You Get.

WYSIWYP

What You See Is What You Print, refers to the ability of a computer system to print colours exactly as they appear on a monitor. WYSIWYP printing requires a special program, called a colour management system (CMS) to calibrate the monitor and printer.