FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs are documents that list and answer the most common questions on a particular subject. There are hundreds of FAQs on subjects as diverse as Pet Grooming and Cryptography. FAQs are usually written by people who have tired of answering the same questions over and over.

Fast Ethernet
Any of a number of 100-Mbps Ethernet specifications. Fast Ethernet offers a speed increase ten times that of the 10BaseT Ethernet specification, while preserving such qualities as frame format, MAC mechanisms, and MTU. Such similarities allow the use of existing 10BaseT applications and network management tools on Fast Ethernet networks. Based on an extension to the IEEE 802.3 specification.

FCC - Federal Communications Commission
The government agency responsible for regulating telecommunications in the United States, located in Washington, D.C. Their responsibilities for public radio communications, such as cellular, include allocation of frequencies, the development of regulations that govern their use and monitoring to ensure that regulations are followed.

FDDI - Fiber Distributed Data Interface
A standard for transmitting data on optical fiber cables at a rate of around 100,000,000 bits-per-second. This speed is 10 times as fast as Ethernet, and about twice as fast as T-3.

Fiber Optic Cable
A cable used for transmitting data as a light wave. Thin, flexible medium capable of conducting modulated light transmission. Fibre optic cable is very expensive compared to other types of transmission media, but is it not susceptible to electromagnetic interference and can transmit data at higher rates.

File manager
A tool on many Web Host systems that lets you import -- or upload -- HTML or image files from your personal computer to their system. This is a user friendly form of FTP that is effective, but in some instances limited in its capabilities when managing many files.

Filename Extension
A notation after the end of a file's name which indicates the type of file it is. The extension follows a period; for example, LETTER.BAK (the extension "BAK" indicates this is a DOS backup file). DOS and Windows extensions must be three letters or less; Macintosh extensions can have more letters, or can be deleted.

Filtering
Process whereby an Ethernet switch or bridge reads the contents of a packet and then finds that the packet does not need to be forwarded, drops it. a filtering rate is the rate at which a device can receive packets and drop them without any loss of incoming packets or delay in processing.

Finger
An Internet software tool for locating people on other Internet sites. Finger is also sometimes used to give access to non-personal information, but the most common use is to see if a person has an account at a particular Internet site. Many sites do not allow incoming Finger requests, but many do.

Firewall
A firewall is a set of related programs, located at a network gateway server, that protects the resources of a private network from users from other networks. Basically, a firewall, working closely with a router program, filters all network packets to determine whether to forward them toward their destination. A firewall is often installed away from the rest of the network so that no incoming request can get directly at private network resources. There are a number of firewall screening methods. A simple one is to screen requests to make sure they come from acceptable (previously identified) domain names and IP addresses. For mobile users, firewalls allow remote access in to the private network by the use of secure logon procedures and authentication certificates.

Flame
An insulting email message sent to an individual as punishment for not adhering to the netiquette. A flame is usually a message that is extremely critical, and often irrational, of someone or something. Sometimes flames are intentionally trying to start a flame war--a series of many messages with people essentially yelling at each other. Such deliberately provocative messages are often called trolls (the same term is used for those who post them). Flame wars are extremely common, and if you've been active on Usenet for any time at all you've probably been involved in one.

Flash
Flash is an application published by the Macromedia company. Think of Flash as a 'window' that is displayed within the HTML environment. You have complete control of the window. You can display animations. You can make the animations clickable. You can make text move and change. Flash is very fast because it draws graphics on the fly, rather than storing text or graphics as complete images. (Although Flash can also display photographic images and illustrations). Flash gives you much more creative room than HTML, but it requires a 'plug-in', a piece of code on your computer that runs Flash. The newer browsers automatically come with Flash. If your user has an older browser, and they don't already have Flash, they will be asked to download it. If they agree to download Flash, they will be sent to the Macromedia site where they will need to click on a few things to receive Flash.

Forward Domain
Same as Forward Zone

Forward Zone
aka Domain Zone. Any zone that isn't a reverse zone. Root is an exception; root is not a domain zone. Sometimes called a forward domain, or forward zone.

Forwarding
Web pages that redirect a user to a different web page or an email account that redirects to a different email address.

FPU - Floating Point Unit
Computer processors are better at dealing with integers than with real numbers (a.k.a. floating point numbers). So when the CPU encounters a floating-point expresion (ie. 1.62 * 0.87359), it sends the problem to the FPU. The FPU is specifically designed to handle floating-point math, so it computes expressions invloving real numbers more efficiently. Floating point units used to be manufactured as individual chips, but they are now usually integrated into the CPU.

FQDN - Fully Qualified Domain Name
Fully Qualified Domain Name.

Frame
An html function that displays a page in another page.

Frame Relay
Frame relay is a telecommunication service designed for cost-efficient data transmission for intermittent traffic between local area networks (LANs) and between end-points in a wide area network (WAN). Frame relay is based on the older X.25 packet-switching technology which was designed for transmitting analog data such as voice conversations. Unlike X.25 which was designed for analog signals, frame relay is a fast-packet technology, which means that the protocol does not attempt to correct errors. When an error is detected in a frame, it is simply "dropped." (thrown away). The end points are responsible for detecting and retransmitting dropped frames.

Frontpage
A WYSIWYG html editor. Created by Microsoft Corp. Not a robust as Dreamweaver or Golive (in our opinion). Can create/code/save dynamic sites and pages in ASP and SQL or Access (all Microsoft products).

FrontPage Extensions
These are a set of server-side scripts and programs which enable users of Microsoft FrontPage to use its special components (called Web Bots). The extensions can be installed for Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) and on other Windows (usually Windows NT) and UNIX web servers.

FTP - File Transfer Protocol
A very common method of moving files between two Internet sites. FTP is a way to login to another Internet site for the purposes of retrieving and/or sending files. There are many Internet sites that have established publicly accessible repositories of material that can be obtained using FTP, by logging in using the account name "anonymous", thus these sites are called "anonymous ftp servers". FTP was invented and in wide use long before the advent of the World Wide Web and originally was always used from a text-only interface.

FTPmail
Using email messages to access the FTP sites. Requires a special software installed on the server. Useful if you don't have a full Internet connection or want to save money on time spent online.

Fully Qualified Domain Name
(FQDN) A DNS domain name that has been stated unambiguously to indicate with certainty its location in the domain namespace tree. Fully qualified domain names differ from relative names in that they typically are stated with a trailing period (.), for example, host.domain.com, to qualify their position to the root of the namespace.

Fully Qualified Host Name
See fully qualified domain name.