1. [techspeak] An absolute network
address of the form foo@bar.baz, where foo is a user name, bar
is a sitename, and baz is a `domain' name, possibly
including periods itself. Contrast with bang path; see also
the network and network address. All Internet ma
and most UUCP sites can now resolve these addresses, thanks to a
large amount of behind-the-scenes magic and PD software
written since 1980 or so. See also bang path, domainist.
2. More loosely, any network address reachable through Internet;
this includes bang path addresses and some internal corporate
and government networks.
Reading Internet addresses is something of an art. Here are the
four most important top-level functional Internet domains followed
by a selection of geographical domains:
com
commercial organizations
edu
educational institutions
gov
U.S. government civilian sites
mil
U.S. military sites
Note that most of the sites in the com and edu domains are in
the U.S. or Canada.
us
sites in the U.S. outside the functional domains
su
sites in the ex-Soviet Union (see kremvax).
uk
sites in the United Kingdom
Within the us domain, there are subdomains for the fifty
states, each generally with a name identical to the state's postal
abbreviation. Within the uk domain, there is an ac subdomain for
academic sites and a co domain for commercial ones. Other
top-level domains may be divided up in similar ways.
etwork, the: n. 1. The union of all the major noncommercial
academic, and hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the old
ARPANET, NSFnet, {BITNET}, and the virtual UUCP and {USENET}
`networks', plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial
time-sharing services (such as CompuServe) that gateway to them....
he network n.
1. Historicaslly, the union of all the major
noncommercial academic, and hacker-oriented networks, such as
Internet, the pre-1990 ARPANET, NSFnet, BITNET, and the
virtual UUCP and Usenet `networks', plus the corporate
in-house networks and commercial time-sharing services (such as
CompuServe, GEnie and AOL) that gateway to them....
