DHCP Server: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. This is a scheme where a client host "leases" an IP address. This can be great on a large scale network because it assigns an IP address, and many other options, such as DNS servers, WINS Servers, and other options. DHCP grew out of BOOTP, which is the same thing only one option specifies a location for a boot file, this is used for diskless workstations that boot off the network boot PROM that contains the small program for doing this. The DHCP Server must have the MAC address of the network card in order to work.
DNS Server: Domain Name System. Because IP addresses are kinda hard to remember, the DNS system assigns names to addresses. There are many different types of DNS records, for name servers, aliases (canonical names), Mail exchanges, etc. There are several root servers, the servers that point to the name servers of each sub domain, in this case a sub domain may be something like polaroid.com, ml.org, neu.edu. Each one of these domains have a name server for servers in it, like gatekeeper.polaroid.com, ci.ml.org, lynx.neu.edu.
FAT: A file allocation table (FAT) is a table that an operating system maintains on a hard disk that provides a map of the clusters (the basic unit of logical storage on a hard disk) that a file has been stored in. When you write a new file to a hard disk, the file is stored in one or more clusters that are not necessarily next to each other; they may be rather widely scattered over the disk. A typical cluster size is 2,048 bytes, 4,192 bytes, or 8,096 bytes. The operating system creates a FAT entry for the new file that records where each cluster is located and their sequential order. When you read a file, the operating system reassembles the file from clusters and places it as an entire file where you want to read it. For example, if this is a long Web page, it may very well be stored on more than one cluster on your hard disk. A more detailed definition can be found here.
IDE / EIDE: Integrated Drive Electronics. IDE is a standard electronic interface used between a computer motherboard's data paths or bus and the computer's disk storage devices. The IDE interface is based on the IBM PC ISA 16-bit bus standard, but it is also used in computers that use other bus standards. Enhanced (sometimes "Expanded") IDE is a standard electronic interface between your computer and its mass storage drives. EIDE's enhancements to Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) make it possible to address a hard disk larger than 528 Mbytes. EIDE also provides faster access to the hard drive, support for Direct Memory Access (DMA), and support for additional drives, including CD-ROM and tape devices through the AT Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI). When updating your computer with a larger hard drive (or other drives), an EIDE "controller" can be added to your computer in one of its card slots.
Kernel: This is the heart of the operating system. The kernel is what handles the I/O operation of all the processes and much more. There are two kernels, one for a uniprocesser (1) system which is NTOSKRNL.EXE and on for multiprocessor systems - NTMPKRNL.EXE. The kernel is entirely loaded into memory which is non-paged - that means that none of it is paged back to the disk. Blue screen errors occur sometimes if there is a page fault, or something tried to read/write data to the area that it is loaded.
NTFS: NTFS is the Windows NT file system. Unlike FAT, NTFS does not use an allocation table but stores information about any file directly with the file. Other operating systems, including Windows 95, and many applications, such as ScanDisk, cannot read NTFS partitions. However, NTFS files or folders that are shared on a network can be accessed by other operating systems. Advantages of NTFS over FAT include faster access to files, more efficient information storage (for example, through a smaller cluster size), better data recovery, integrated file compression, larger disk partitions, and better file security. NTFS is preferred for Windows NT Server because of its better security and fault tolerance features. NTFS partitions also remain relatively unfragmented for long periods of time. A more detailed definition can be found here.
NetBIOS: The heart of Microsoft
Networking. It can go over the following transports:
NetBEUI: IBM's small network protocol
IPX/SPX: Novell's Netware protocol
TCP/IP The
internet
You need at least one protocol to enable this. In Windows 95, it is represented by
the "Microsoft Client."
NetBEUI: IBM and Microsoft's LanManager's
protocol.
This Protocol is designed for small networks.
It is non-routable but very efficient. It is completely backwards-compatible with
IBM's LanManager and OS/2.
Primary Domain Controller: This is the server that is the master of the domain. It is responsible for holding the main security accounts for the entire domain. It also will replicate the accounts across the entire domain on any Backup Domain Controller(s).
Registry: The registry is a universal database that the system and applications use to store data. It is stored in several files on your hard drive that are encrypted. You must use regedit and regedt32 to view it. This is one of NT's greatest strongpoint, where other operating systems use ASCII text files to store information, including Windows 3.1 and UNIX. Windows 95 uses both, but only keeps the .ini files for 16-bit support. All 32-bit applications should use the registry.
SCSI: Small Computer System Interface.
This is a technology that goes back quite a few
years. I don't know the exact history off hand, I will add it in later.
A SCSI setup consists of the following:
SCSI adapter - such as an Adaptec or BusLogic which are very
popular.
The adapter is the interface between the
system bus and the SCSI bus. There are ISA, EISA, PCI, and MCA cards on the market
today. If you have a new system, a PCI would be the most likely to get. The
SCSI adapter scans the SCSI bus for devices. You can have a maximum of 7 devices on
a SCSI or SCSI-2 bus. The Adapter usually is ID number 7. Your SCSI bus may
look like the following (displayed when the system starts up):
SCSI ID#0
SEAGATE ST2230N
DRIVE C: 80h
SCSI ID#2 TOCHIBA CD-ROM
DRIVE D: 81h
SCSI ID#6 DEC TAPE ARCHIVE
82h
As you can see, devices such as CD-ROMs, and tape backups can be attached to the SCSI bus. Another important part of the SCSI system is that the cable needs to be terminated at each end. Most Adapters will automatically terminate their end, depending on if you have external devices. Devices usually have a jumper for enabling/disabling the termination. You can not have no more and no less than one at each end for proper operation. The alternative to SCSI is IDE, on Apple computers, SCSI is standard.
TCP/IP: Transmission Control Protocol /
Internet Protocol.
This is the protocol of the internet. It
is very powerful, and routable. It is based on having machines assigned an IP number
such as 123.143.12.67. Names can be assigned to these numbers such as foo.bar.com in
a DNS Server. The only problem with this current version of IP (V4) is that there
can only be a maximum of 255^4 which is 4,228,250,625 and considering that some of
that is reserved, and every machine, website, dial-in modem, routers, switches, and even
hubs and printers have one. We are already running out, so the next version of IP
(V6) will be a different addressing system.
WINS Server: Windows Internet Name Server. This makes up for the fact that computer names may be different for NetBIOS than the Internet name.
Example:
Computer name:
CUNNINGHAM
Internet name:
ci.ml.org
Address
155.33.67.176
In the WINS server, records for the computer names and their corresponding address are kept in a database, much like a DNS Server does. The client machine then must have the WINS server in it's TCP/IP setup. When the client can't resolve the name via a netBIOS broadcast, it looks it up in the WINS Server.