- W3
- See: World Wide Web
- W3C
- World Wide Web
Consortium, a governing body for web standards.
- WAIS
- See: Wide Area
Information Servers
- WAE
- See: Wireless
Application Environment
- WAN
- See: Wide area network
- WAP
- See: Wireless
Application Protocol
- WDP
- See: Wireless Datagram
Protocol
- WEP
- See: Wired Equivalent
Privacy
- WLAN
- See: Wireless Local Area
Network
- WML
- See: Wireless Markup
Language
- WPA
- See: Wi-Fi Protected
Access
- WSP
- See: Wireless Session
Protocol
- WTA
- See: Wireless Telephony
Application
- WTLS
- See: Wireless Transport
Layer Security protocol
- WTP
- See: Wireless
Transaction Protocol
- WebCrawler
- A WWW search engine. The
aim of the WebCrawler Project is to provide a
high-quality, fast, and free Internet search service.
The WebCrawler may be reached at "http://webcrawler.com/".
[Source: WebCrawler's "WebCrawler Facts"]
- WG
- See: Working Group
- White Book
- a document produced for
the JNT setting out the strategy to be adopted by the
Academic Community in its transition from interim
standards (Coloured Books) to ISO standards. Overtaken
by history - an IP.
- white pages
- The Internet supports
several databases that contain basic information about
users, such as email addresses, telephone numbers, and
postal addresses. These databases can be searched to
get information about particular individuals. Because
they serve a function akin to the telephone book,
these databases are often referred to as "white
pages. See also: Knowbot, netfind, whois, X.500.
[Source: RFC1392]
- Wi-Fi Protected
Access (WPA)
- A development of Wired
Equivalent Privacy to overcome deficiencies in WEP as
used in Wireless LANs, by incorporating elements of
802.11i security before the latter (to be known
subsequently as WPA v2) is fully developed. Temporary
Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) is incorporated to allow
different encryption keys for each packet transmitted,
as are RADIUS support and facilities to stop rogue
network points attracting authenticated users to steal
their credentials. See also: RADIUS, Wired Equivalent
Privacy.
- Wireless Application
Protocol (WAP)
- A stack of protocols,
akin to the OSI model or the TCP/IP stack, to
implement the layers needed for communication with
wireless devices, security, applications, etc,
promoted as an open standard by the WAP Forum http://www.wapforum.org/.
- Wireless Application
Protocol Gateway
- A WAP client may receive
documents from an ordinary WWW server via a WAP
gateway, a proxy which converts between WAP requests
and HTTP requests (including CGI programs) and
converts the output to WAP formats (e.g. WML or
WMLScript) followed by compression to binary for
sending to the client. WWW pages may also be coded
directly in WML on the WWW server before receipt by
the gateway.
- Wireless Application
Environment (WAE)
- WAE is the programming
environment for WAP. WAE is handled by a browser
program in the device, and consists of Wireless Markup
Language (WML), WMLScript and Wireless Telephony
Application (WTA).
- Wireless Datagram
Protocol (WDP)
- The transport layer of
WAP, which transforms datagrams from upper layer
protocols into the formats specific to datapaths,
bearers and devices, e.g. GSM or SMS or GPRS. Thus
upper layers have no need to program for the physical
layer of communication such as air interface.
- Wired Equivalent
Privacy (WEP)
- A security protocol
within IEE standard 802.11b intended to give Wireless
Local Area Networks the degree of privacy expected of
fixed LANs. Encryption over air between the devices
and fixed access points (rather than end to end) goes
part way towards countering the eavesdropping risk of
signals spilling out of buildings. However, the length
of the key may be only 40 bits (up to 128 bits is
allowed) even if WEP is turned on, and the encryption
method produces some predictable sequences, so it is
prone to statistical analysis to recover keys. Also
the Service Set Identifier (SSID) is broadcast in
clear in probes from the access point (unless turned
off); this is used as a "password" for
packets sent between members of specific LANs, so is
useful for eavesdroppers to acquire, especially if
obvious names are chosen e.g. 10Downing.
As an interim solution,
the IEE 802.1x standard is available for port-level
authentication and key management i.e. rapid changes
and secure key delivery. This incorporates Extensible
Authentication Protocol (EAP) from RFC
2284. This was first designed for wired (e.g.
dialup) links, and is not itself a cipher standard, so
the first version authenticates the MAC address rather
than the user. The authentication is passed through
from the fixed access point to an authentication
server such as RADIUS or Kerberos. However, there are
no checks that an access point is what it claims to
be, so there is a way of masquerading or intercepting
the authentication process.
Work on the 802.11i
standard is ongoing at March 2003, but this addresses
such issues as mutual and per-packet authentication,
and could incorporate Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).
An interim standard Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
contains some of the technologies to overcome WEP
deficiencies.
It is imperative that
further security measures are taken on top of WEP and
its immediate successors, such as Virtual Private
Network schemes, although Network Layer solutions such
as IPsec are tricky when roaming devices use DHCP for
dynamic IP addresses, and products orientated to
wireless working are necessary. See also: 802.11,
Kerberos, RADIUS, Wireless Local Area Network,
Wireless Protected Access.
- Wireless Local Area
Network (WLAN)
- A data network intended
to serve an area of only a few hundres square metres
or less, using radio communications between mobile
computers and (typically) a fixed access point which
provides onward connections to fixed networks such as
the Internet. There are several competing technologies
such as HIPERLAN in Europe and the 802.11 series in
the USA. This is the next level up in distance from
Personal Area Networks such as Bluetooth. See also:
Bluetooth, 802.11, HIPERLAN.
- Wireless Markup
Language (WML)
- The markup language for
WAP, a tag-based language like HTML. Strictly, WML is
a Document Type Definition (DTD) of eXtendable Markup
Language, which implied a relationship with the DTD
for (strictly defined) HTML.
- Wireless Session
Protocol (WSP)
- The session layer of WAP,
handling the interface between the application layer
WAE and the transaction layer WTP. Sessions can be
connection-orientated or connectionless, and can be
suspended and resumed on demand.
- Wireless Telephony
Application (WTA)
- The telephony interface
for WAP, part of Wireless Application Environment (WAE).
WTA can control telephony functions of the device from
WML or WMLScript, or from requests from the network.
- Wireless Transport
Layer Security protocol (WTLS)
- WTLS handles security
for WAP, i.e. encryption, decryption, user
authentication and data integrity checking of
datagrams from upper layer protocols before passing to
the transport layer WDP. It is based on the fixed
network Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol,
formerly Secure Sockets Layer.
- Wireless Transaction
Protocol (WTP)
- WTP is the transaction
layer of WAP, which takes data packets from the
session layer WSP and chops them into lower layer
datagrams to pass to the security layer WTLS, or
reassembles them at the far end. WTP also tracks
sequences of sent and received packets, handling
retransmissions or acknowledgements as required.
- whois
- An Internet program
which allows users to query a database of people and
other Internet entities, such as domains, networks,
and hosts, kept at the DDN NIC. The information for
people shows a person's company name, address, phone
number and email address. See also: Defense Data
Network Network ..., white pages, Knowbot, X.500.
[Source: FYI4]
- Wide Area Information
Servers (WAIS)
- A distributed
information service which offers simple natural
language input, indexed searching for fast retrieval,
and a "relevance feedback" mechanism which
allows the results of initial searches to influence
future searches. Public domain implementations are
available. See also: archie, Gopher, Prospero.
[Source: RFC1392]
- Wide Area Network
(WAN)
- A network, usually
constructed with serial lines, which covers a large
geographic area. See also: Local Area Network,
Metropolitan Area Network. [Source: RFC1392]
- WML
- See: Wireless Markup
Language
- WMLScript
- A scripting language for
WML, akin to Javascript or ECMAScript for HTML, which
can control functions in the browser or the phone,
using scripts downloaded from the server.
- Working Group (WG)
- A working group, within
the IETF, is a group of people who work under a
charter to achieve a certain goal. That goal may be
the creation of an Informational document, the
creation of a protocol specification, or the
resolution of problems in the Internet. Most working
groups have a finite lifetime. That is, once a working
group has achieved its goal, it disbands. There is no
official membership for a working group. Unofficially,
a working group member is somebody who is on that
working group's mailing list; however, anyone may
attend a working group meeting. See also: Internet
Engineering Task Force, Birds Of a Feather. [Source:
RFC1983]
- World Wide Web (WWW
or W3)
- A hypertext-based,
distributed information system created by researchers
at CERN in Switzerland. Users may create, edit or
browse hypertext documents. The clients and servers
are freely available. [Source: RFC1392]
- workstation
- A networked personal
computing device with more power than a standard IBM
PC or Macintosh. Typically, a workstation has an
operating system such as unix that is capable of
running several tasks at the same time. It has several
megabytes of memory and a large, high-resolution
display. Examples are Sun Sparcstations and Digital
Alpha stations.
- worm
- A computer program which
replicates itself and is self- propagating. Worms, as
opposed to viruses, are meant to spawn in network
environments. Network worms were first defined by
Shoch & Hupp of Xerox in ACM Communications (March
1982). The Internet worm of November 1988 is perhaps
the most famous; it successfully propagated itself on
over 6,000 systems across the Internet. See also:
Trojan Horse, virus. [Source: RFC1392]
- WRT
- With Respect To [Source:
RFC1392]
- WWW
- See: World Wide Web
- WYSIWYG
- What You See is What You
Get [Source: RFC1392]
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