Glossary of Terms

Mail List
A system that allows people to send email to one address, whereupon their message is copied and sent to all of the other subscribers to the mail list.

Mail user agent (MUA)
We usually refer to the MUA as a mail client. Short for mail user agent, this is the software that allows a user to access and manage email, including reading, composing, disposing, printing, and displaying email messages. The MUA provides the interface between the user and the MTA. MUA software is third party; examples of MUAs are Eudora and Microsoft Outlook. The only MUA that we offer are the various webmail interfaces.

Mailbox
The directory on a host computer where your email message are stored. With some systems you can choose between keeping saved messages on the server or on your local computer.

MAN
A MAN or Metropolitan Area Network is a large computer network usually spanning a city. They typically use wireless infrastructure or optical fiber connections to link their sites. The IEEE 802-2001 standard describes a MAN as being: A MAN is optimized for a larger geographical area than is a LAN, ranging from several blocks of buildings to entire cities. As with local networks, MANs can also depend on communications channels of moderate-to-high data rates. A MAN might be owned and operated by a single organization, but it usually will be used by many individuals and organizations. MANs might also be owned and operated as public utilities. They will often provide means for internetworking of local networks.

Megabyte
A million bytes

Message Board
An electronic message center (also called a bulletin board); part of the Bulletin Board System (BBS). Message boards are accessed by dialing in with a modem; once there one may review messages left by others or leave a message. Bulletin boards are a particularly good place to find free or inexpensive software products. Most bulletin boards serve specific interest groups.

Message Store System (MSS)
The Message Store System (MSS) is a system that actually stores customer mail messages. With a standalone mail server, the individual responsibilities of message storage, SMTP, POP, and web interface are performed by different services all on one server. However, on some systems multiple servers handle the responsibilities.

Message Transfer Agent (MTA)
An MTA is the program responsible for receiving incoming emails and delivering the messages to individual users. The MTA transfers messages between computers. Hidden from the average user, it is responsible for routing messages to their proper destinations. In traditional stand-alone servers, this is a service on the server. In clustered systems, a cluster of several servers dedicated to that purpose plays the “MTA service” role. MTAs receive messages from both MUAs and other MTAs, although single-user machines more often retrieve mail messages using POP3.

Meta Tag
An optional HTML tag that is used to specify information about a Web document. Some search engines such as AltaVista use "spiders" to index Web pages. These spiders read the information contained within a page's META tag. So in theory, an HTML or Web page author has the ability to control how there site is indexed by search engines and how and when it will come up on a user's search. The META tag can also be used to specify an HTTP or URL address for the page to "jump" to after a certain amount of time. This is known as Client-Pull. What this means, is a Web page author can control the amount of time a Web page is up on the screen as well as where the browser will go next. Here's a look at the syntax for search engine indexing: Here's a look at the syntax for Client Pull: this will "refresh" or change to the URL specified in 30 seconds.

MIME
A protocol for Internet email that enables the transmission of nontextual data such as graphics, audio, video and other binary types of files. An email program such as Eudora is said to be "MIME Compliant" if it can both send and receive files using the MIME standard. When non-text files are sent using the MIME standard they are converted (encoded) into text - although the resulting text is not really readable. Besides email software, the MIME standard is also universally used by Web servers to identify the files they are sending to Web clients. In this way new file formats can be accommodated simply by updating the browsers' list of pairs of MIME-types and appropriate software for handling each type.

Mirror
A server that provides copies of the same files as another server. Some servers are so popular that other servers have been set up to mirror them and to spread the load on to more than one site. Many international sites have mirrors set up in other countries to allow quicker access for their international users.

Modem
A device connecting a computer and to a phone line, that allows the computer to talk to other computers through the phone system. Basically, modems do for computers what a telephone does for humans. Generally there are 3 types of modems: external, PC Card and internal.

Mosaic
Mosaic is the common name of a World Wide Web multimedia browser program developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Urbana-Champaign, Ill. It was the first Web browser that used the same interface for Macintosh, Windows and UNIX, and started the popularity of the Web. The official, copyrighted name of the program is NCSA Mosaic. The source code for Mosaic has been licensed by several companies, most notably, Netscape.

MX Record
Mail Exchange Record - Mail Server records designate the mailservers that will handle mail for your domain. If you have more than one mailserver, MX records also specify the order in which the mailservers will be used as primary, backup, etc.

MySQL
MySQL is a true multi-user, multi-threaded SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. SQL is a popular database language. MySQL is a client/server implementation that consists of a server daemon (mysqld) and many different client programs and libraries.