Explore this list of computer acronyms used by webmasters, graphic designers, network professionals, search engine marketers, web developers, Internet writers, computer nerds, aspiring geeks and surfers.
We’ve all heard those pretentious IT managers and their overpaid underlings pontificating in acronymese during smoke breaks. XML is not supposed to be a spoken language. Understanding these computer acronyms should help you decrypt their conversations.
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A
| ACL | Access Control List |
| AIF | Audio Interchange Format |
| AID | Advertiser ID |
| AIP | Association of Internet Professionals |
| ANSI | American National Standards Institute |
| AJAX | Asynchronous JavaScript and XML |
| API | Application Program Interface |
| ARP | Address Resolution Protocol |
| ASCII | American Standard Code for Information Interchange |
| ACE | Accredited System Engineer |
| ASF | Advanced Streaming Format |
| ASIN | Amazon.com Standard Item Number |
| ASP | Active Server Pages or Application Service Provider |
| ASPN | Apple Solution Professionals Network |
| ATM | Asychronous Transfer Mode |
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B
| B2B | Business to Business |
| B2C | Business to Consumer |
| BBS | Bulletin Board System |
| bin | Binary |
| bps | Bits Per Second |
| BLOB | Binary Large Object |
| BLOG | Web Log |
| BSD | Berkley Software Distribution |
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C
| CAD | Computer Aided Design |
| CAT-5 | Category 5 |
| CCA | Citrix Certified Administrator |
| CCDA | Cisco Certified Design Associate |
| CCDP | Cisco Certified Design Professional |
| CCEA | Citrix Certified Enterprise Administrator |
| CCI | Citrix Certified Instructor |
| CCIP | Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional |
| CCNP | Cisco Certified Network Professional |
| CCNA | Cisco Certified Network Administrator |
| CERN | European Particle Physics Laboratory |
| CFML | Cold Fusion Markup Language |
| CCSP | Citrix Certified Sales Professional |
| CCIE | Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert |
| CSS | Cascading Style Sheet |
| CGI | Common Gateway Interface |
| CHAP | Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol |
| CHMOD | Change Mode |
| CHTML | Compact HTML |
| CISSP | Certified Information System Security Professional |
| CIW | Certified Internet Webmaster |
| CMS | Content Management System |
| CNA | Certified Novell Administrator |
| CNE | Certified Novell Engineer |
| COM | Component Object Model |
| CORBA | Common Object Request Broker Architecture |
| CPA | Cost Per Action |
| CPM | Cost Per Thousand Impressions |
| CPC | Cost Per Click |
| CPU | Central Processing Unit |
| CRM | Customer Relationship Management |
| CSU | Channel Service Unit |
| CSV | Comma Separated Value |
| CTEC | Microsoft Certified Technical Education Center |
| CTO | Chief Technology Officer |
| CWNA | Certified Wireless Network Administrator |
| CWNI | Certified Wireless Network Integrator |
| CWNE | Certified Wireless Networking Expert |
| CWNP | Certified Wireless Network Professional |
| CYMK | Cyan Magenta Yellow Black |
| CWP | Certified Web Professional |
| CWSP | Certified Wireless Security Professional |
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D
| DB | Database |
| DBA | Database Administrator |
| DBMS | Database Management System |
| DCOM | Distributed Component Object Model |
| DDE | Dynamic Data Exchange |
| DDS | Digital Data Storage |
| DIR | Directory |
| DIVX | Digital Video Express |
| DLC | Data Link Control |
| DMOZ | Directory Mozilla |
| DNS | Domain Name Service |
| DHCP | Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol |
| DHTML | Dynamic Hyper Text Markup Language |
| DSU | Data Service Unit |
| DTD | Document Type Definition |
| DLL | Dynamic Link Library |
| DOM | Document Object Model |
| DRM | Digital Restrictions Management |
| DSL | Digital Subscriber Line |
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E
| ECMA | European Computer Manufacturer’s Association |
| EOF | End of File |
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F
| FAQ | Frequently Asked Questions |
| FAT | File Allocation Table |
| FDDI | Fiber Distributed Data Interface |
| FFA | Free For All |
| FSF | Free Software Foundation |
| FTP | File Transfer Protocol |
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G
| Gbps | Giga Bits Per Second |
| GBps | Giga Bytes Per Second |
| GHz | Gigahertz |
| GIF | Graphics Interchange Format |
| GIMP | GNU Image Manipulation Program |
| GML | Generalized Markup Language |
| GPL | GNU Public License |
| GREP | Global Regular Expression Print |
| GUI | Graphical User Interface |
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H
| HCL | Hardware Compatibility List |
| HDML | Handheld Device Markup Language |
| HSB | Hue Saturation Brightness |
| HTI | Home Technology Integrator |
| HTML | Hyper Text Markup Language |
| HTTP | HTTP |
| HWG | HTML Writers Guild |
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I
| IAAS | Infrastructure as a Service |
| IAB | Internet Architecture Board |
| IANA | Assigned Numbers Authority |
| ICANN | Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers |
| ICII | Internet Certification Institute International |
| IEEE | Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers |
| IETF | Internet Engineering Task Force |
| IIS | Internet Information Server |
| IMAP | Internet Messaging Access Protocol |
| IPC | Interprocess Communication |
| IPX | Internetnetwork Packet Exchange |
| IRTF | Internet Research Task Force |
| ISAPI | Internet Server API |
| ISBN | International Standard Book Number |
| ISDN | Integrated Services Digital Network |
| ISO | International Standards Organization |
| ISOC | Internet Society |
| ISP | Internet Service Provider |
| IT | Information Technology |
| ITU | International Telecomunications Union |
| IWA | International Webmasters Association |
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J
| J2EE | Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition |
| JAR | Java Archive |
| JDBC | Java Database Connectivity |
| JIT | Just In Time |
| JDK | Java Development Kit |
| JPEG | Joint Photographics Expert Group |
| JSP | Java Server Page |
| JVM | Java Virtual Machine |
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K
| Kbps | Kilo Bits Per Second |
| KBps | Kilo Bytes Per Second |
| KDE | K Desktop Environment |
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L
| LAMP | Linux Apache MySQL PHP |
| LDAP | Lightweight Directory Access Protocol |
| LILO | Last In Last Out |
| LSI | Latent Semantic Indexing |
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M
| MAC | Media Access Control |
| Mbps | Mega Bits Per Second |
| MBps | Mega Bytes Per Second |
| MCAD | Microsoft Certified Application Developer |
| MCDBA | Microsoft Certified Database Administrator |
| MCSD | Microsoft Certified Systems Developer |
| MCP | Microsoft Certified Professional |
| MCSE | Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer |
| MFA | Made for AdSense |
| MIB | Management Information Base |
| MIME | Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions |
| MMC | Microsoft Management Console |
| MOUS | Microsoft Office User Specialist |
| MP3 | MPEG Layer 3 |
| MPEG | Moving Picture Experts Group |
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N
| NAP | Network Access Point |
| NCSA | National Center for Supercomputing Applications |
| NIC | Network Interface Card |
| NTFS | NT File System |
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O
| OCS | Open Content Syndication |
| ODBC | Open Database Connectivity |
| ODP | Open Directory Project |
| OEM | Original Equipment Manufacturer |
| OLE | Object Linking and Embedding |
| OOP | Object Oriented Programming |
| OPML | Outline Processor Markup Language |
| OS | Operating System |
| OSI | Open System Interconnection |
| OSPF | Open Shortest Path First |
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P
| PAD | Portable Application Description |
| PDA | Personal Digital Assistant |
| PDF | Portable Document Format |
| PERL | Practical Extraction and Report Language |
| PGP | Pretty Good Privacy |
| PHP | Hypertext Preprocessor |
| PID | Publisher ID |
| PNG | Portable Network Graphics |
| POP | Post Office Protocol |
| PPC | Pay Per Click |
| PPP | Point to Point Protocol |
| PPTP | Point to Point Tunneling Protocol |
| PR | Page Rank |
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R
| RAID | Redundant Array of Independent Disks |
| RAS | Remote Access Server |
| RDBMS | Relational Database Management System |
| RDF | Resource Decription Framework |
| RFC | Request For Comments |
| RGB | Red, Green, Blue |
| RHCE | Red Hat Certified Engineer |
| RHCP | Red Hat Certified Professional |
| RIP | Routing Information Protocol |
| RMON | Remote Monitoring |
| ROI | Return on Investment |
| RON | Run of Network |
| ROS | Run of Site |
| RSS | Rich Site Summary |
| RTF | Rich Text Format |
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S
| SAP | Service Advertising Protocol |
| SAX | Simple API for XML |
| SCNA | Security Certified Network Architect |
| SCNP | Security Certified Network Professional |
| SCP | Security Certified Program |
| SDK | Software Development Kit |
| SED | Stream Editor |
| SGML | Standard Generalized Markup Language |
| SEM | Search Engine Marketing |
| SEO | Search Engine Optimization |
| SERP | Search Engine Results Page |
| SID | Security Identifier |
| SLIP | Serial Line Internet Protocol |
| SMIL | Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language |
| SMP | Simple Management Protocol |
| SMS | Systems Management Server |
| SMTP | Simple Mail Transfer Protocol |
| SNA | Systems Network Architecture |
| SNMP | Simple Network Management Protocol |
| SOAP | Simple Object Access Protocol |
| SPX | Sequenced Packet Exchange |
| SQL | Structure Query Language |
| SSH | Secure Shell |
| SSI | Server Side Include |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer |
| SVG | Scalable Vector Graphics |
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T
| TCP/IP | Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol |
| TFTP | Trivial File Transfer Protocol |
| TLD | Top Level Domain |
| TOS | Terms of Service |
| TTL | Time To Live |
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U
| UCE | Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (spam) |
| UDDI | Universal Description, Discovery and Integration |
| UDP | User Datagram Protocol |
| UI | User Interface |
| UML | Unified Modeling Language |
| UMTS | Universal Mobile Telecommunications System |
| URL | Uniform Resource Locator |
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V
| Veronica | Very Easy Rodent Oriented Ntwk Index to Comp. Archives |
| VM | Virtual Machine |
| VLAN | Virtual LAN |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VRML | Virtual Reality Markup Language |
| VTAM | Virtual Telecommunications Access Method |
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W
| W3C | World Wide Web Consortium |
| WAIS | Wide Area Information Server |
| WAN | Wide Area Network |
| WAP | Wireless Application Protocol |
| WBT | Web-based Training |
| WECA | Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance |
| WEP | Wired Equivalency Privacy |
| WIPO | World Intellectual Property Organization |
| WLAN | Wireless Lan |
| Wi-Fi | Wireless Fidelity |
| WM | Webmaster |
| WML | Wireless Markup Language |
| WSDL | Web Services Description Language |
| WWW | World Wide Web |
| WYSIWYG | What You See Is What You Get |
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X
| XBRL | Extensible Business Reporting Language |
| XHTML | Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language |
| Xlink | XML Linking Language |
| XLS | Extensible Stylesheet Language |
| XSLT | Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations |
| XML | Extensible Markup Language |
| XQL | XML Query Language |
| XSD | XML Schema Definition |
| XUL | Extensible User Interface Language |
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Y
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Z
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