Every time you connect to the Internet that link is assigned a unique number (e.g. 145.10.20.198), this is known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address. Static simply allows you to keep the same number with each connection, which isn’t important for the vast majority of Internet users.

- Firewall

An often complex piece of software designed to monitor a connection and prevent hackers and viruses from accessing your system. This is usually supplied as a third party software package, yet few ISP’s offer it due to support difficulties (can cause problems that are tedious to solve over the phone).

Where not included in the hardware (we’ll get to this later) or operating system (WinXP has a very basic Firewall), you can also get a free one from developers such as ‘ZoneAlarm’ (http://www.zonealarm.com).

- Newsgroups

A somewhat old fashioned global public forum system where everybody and anybody can post in thousands upon thousands of different categories. This is no longer a critical service and most are unlikely to ever need or use it.

- Webspace/Domain

If you ever fancy having your own website then you will need some webspace, which is only important for a small percentage of Internet users and thus down to personal preference. We would require a whole other article to explain the intricacies of this.

Domain’s allow you to have a custom name attached to your webspace on the Internet. Most ISP’s may assign your website name as http://www.ISPNAME.USERNAME.co.uk , while a domain would allow you this http://www.MYCHOSENNAME.co.uk .

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