B

B2B

See Business to Business

B2C

See Business to Consumer

B-to-B

See Business to Business

B-to-C

See Business to Consumer

Backbone

A central high-speed network established by a company or organisation for connecting independent sub-networks.

Bandwidth

In simplistic terms, bandwidth is the amount of information travelling through a single channel at any one moment in time.

Bandwidth is a measure of the information capacity of a communication link. For example, Ethernet has a bandwidth of 10Mbps.

Workstations or network users that use the network heavily are referred to as using a high bandwidth—these are usually users who do a lot of graphical or multi-media work across the network.

Bandwidth is the difference between the highest and lowest frequencies of a communication link, expressed in Hertz (Hz).

Baud

This is the signalling rate of a line, in other words, the rate at which data travels along a line. Baud is the number of transitions (voltage or frequency changes) made per second.

BBS

(Bulletin Board System) a computer system usually run by local users making files available for downloading and setting up electronic discussion forums.

B Channel

Bearer Channel. In ISDN communications, a B channel transmits communications at 64 Kbps.

Binary

Binary data is a direct representation of the bits stored in RAM on a computer. Much more compact and accurate than ASCII.

binary entity

An entity that references any file that's not an XML-encoded resource. Audio, video and graphics files are all examples of binary entities.

Bisync

Communications protocol commonly used in the US

Bisynchronous

See Bisync

Bit

(Binary DigIT) the smallest unit of computerized data, comprising of either a 1 or 0. A combination of bits can indicate an alphabetic character, a numeric digit, or perform a signaling, switching or other function. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits-per-second.

Groups of bits make up larger units of data in computer systems—the most commonly known is the byte (eight bits).

Bit rate

The speed at which bits are transmitted, usually expressed in bits per second (bps).

Body

In E-mail terms, the part of the message containing the most textual content, sandwiched between the Header and the Signature.

Bookmark

Virtual bookmarks work pretty much the same as the real ones. They record a URL for the web page to enable you to refer back to at a later date.

box properties

In CSS, box properties are the collection of properties and values that control the formating of the margins, padding, height, width, and boder aspects of any element.

Also see CSS

bps

(Bits PerSecond). bps is used as a measurement for transmission of data in a communications system.

Browser

(Often called a 'Web Browser') allows the user to search the World Wide Web and other Internet facilities using a Graphical User Interface. Examples are Mosaic and Netscape.

BRI

(Basic Rate Interface). A BRI line is one of two access methods for ISDN; PRI (Primary Rate Interface), which is high speed, is the other. Each BRI consists of two 64 Kbps B channels and one 16 Kbps D channel per ISDN line.

Bridge

Broadcast

A way of sending messages to all users or groups of users of a network

Business to Business

Business to Business.

Business to Consumer

Bulletin Boards

See BBS

Byte

A unit of data, generally formed from 8 bits. Example: 01101010

A byte holds the equivalent of a single character, such as a letter of the alphabet (a) or an ampersand (&). Measurements on storage devices, such as disks and databases, are given in bytes.