Wait State — A period of time during which the processor is being idle while waiting for data from a device or memory.

Wallpaper — A picture or drawing stored as a bitmap file (a file that has a .bmp extension).

WAN — Wide Area Network. A network connecting computer networks or devices that are located in different geographic areas. It ranges from across a city to worldwide.

WAN (Wide Area Network) — A geographically dispersed network.

WAN Topology Document — Document that provides information about the number of sites, throughput, and dial-up lines.

Warning beep — The sound that your computer makes when you encounter an error or try to perform a task that Windows NT does not recognize.

Watchdog — Packets used to ensure that workstations are still connected to the NetWare server.

WDM — Win32 Driver Model. A 32-bit driver model based on the Windows NT driver model that is designed to provide a common architecture of I/O services for both Windows NT and Windows operating systems for specific classes of drivers

WDM Streaming (streaming) — An extension of the Microsoft DirectShow application programming interface (API) based on the Windows Driver Model (WDM). WDM streaming provides the kernel connection and streaming services used by the WDM streaming class driver and by components of the next major versions of Microsoft Windows NT and Microsoft Windows 98. In these operating systems, WDM streaming provides low-level services in Ring 0 for the lowest latency streaming. DirectShow provides higher-level features and control

Webcasting — The automated delivery of personalized and up-to-date information via the Internet or a corporate intranet

WHOAMI — A NetWare command used to display your user name, the file server's name, software version, the date and time of login, the group you belong to, your rights, and security equivalencies.

Wide area network (WAN) — A network that provides data communication capability in areas larger than those serviced by a local area network. A WAN typically relies on serial line protocols to interconnect subnetworks.

Wildcard — A character that represents one or more characters. The question mark (?) wildcard can be used to represent any single character, and the asterisk (*) wildcard can be used to represent any character or group of characters that might match that position in other filenames.

WIN16 — The set of application services (e.g. API) provided by the 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows: Windows 3.x or earlier.

WIN32 — The set of application services (e.g. API) provided by the 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows: Windows 95 and NT.

Win32 Driver Model — See WDM

Window — A rectangular area on your screen in which you view an application, document or part of a program. You can open, close, and move windows, and change the size of most windows. You can open several windows at a time, and you can often reduce a window to an icon or enlarge it to fill the entire desktop.

Window menu — A menu that contains commands you can use to manipulate a window. You click the program icon or document icon at the left of the title bar to open the window menu.

Windows 95 — A current 32-bit version of Microsoft Windows for medium-range, Intel-based personal computers. This system includes peer networking services, Internet support, and strong support for older DOS applications and peripherals.

Windows 98 — The most current 32-bit version of Microsoft Windows for medium-range, Intel-based personal computers. This system includes peer networking services, Internet support, and strong support for older DOS applications and peripherals.

Windows application — A term used in this document as a shorthand term to refer to an application that is designed to run with Windows and does not run without Windows. All Windows applications follow similar conventions for arrangement of menus, style of dialog boxes, and keyboard and mouse use.

Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) — A name resolution service that resolves Windows networking computer names (NetBIOS names) to IP addresses in a routed environment, thus facilitating browsing and intercommunication over TCP/IP networks. A WINS server handles name registrations, queries, and releases. See also IP address; routing.

Windows NT — The current portable and secure, 32-bit preemptive-multitasking version of Microsoft Windows for powerful Intel, Alpha, PowerPC, or MIPS-based computers; the system includes peer networking services, server networking services, Internet client and server services, and a broad range of utilities. .Windows NT Server provides centralized management and security, advanced fault tolerance, and additional connectivity.

Windows NT application — Used as a shorthand term to refer to an application that is designed to run with Windows NT and does not run without Windows NT. All Windows NT applications follow similar conventions for arrangement of menus, style of dialog boxes, and keyboard and mouse use.

Windows NT browser system — Consists of a master browser, backup browser, and client systems. The master browser maintains the browse list—of all the available domains and servers—and periodically sends copies to the backup browsers. See also browse; master browser.

Windows NT file system (NTFS) — The file system designed for use specifically with the Windows NT operating system. NTFS supports file system recovery and extremely large storage media, in addition to other advantages. It also supports object-oriented applications by treating all files as objects with user-defined and system-defined attributes

Windows NT Registry — A hierarchical database that provides a central repository to store configuration information about hardware and user accounts. It is comprised of subtrees and their keys, hives, and value entries. See also hive; key; subtree; user account.

Windows NT Server — A superset of Windows NT Workstation, Windows NT Server provides centralized management and security, fault tolerance, and additional connectivity. See also fault tolerance; Windows NT Workstation.

Windows NT Server Directory Services — A Windows NT protected subsystem that maintains the directory database and provides an application programming interface (API) for accessing the database. See also API; directory database.

Windows NT Server Services for Macintosh — A software component of Windows NT Server that allows Macintosh users access to the computer running Windows NT Server. The services provided with this component allow PC and Macintosh users to share files and resources, such as printers on the AppleTalk network or those attached to the Windows NT Server. See also File Server for Macintosh; Print Server for Macintosh.

Windows NT Workstation — The portable, secure, 32-bit, preemptive multitasking member of the Microsoft Windows operating system family.

Windows on Windows (WOW) — The compatibility service that allows the use of WIN16 apps under Windows NT. WOW serves as a 32-bit interface shell for 16-bit applications.

Windows Sockets — An interprocess communications protocol that delivers connection-oriented data streams used by Internet software and software ported from UNIX environments. See Sockets.

WINS — See Windows Internet Name Service.

Wiring closet — A room containing the individual network connections for all devices in a specific area.

Wizard — An interactive Help utility within an application that guides the user through each step of a particular task

Workflow Information Doc — Document that provides information about the information flow of the company, what applications are needed/used at each location.

Workflow mgt software — A common type of workgroup applications that manages the steps needed to complete a transaction or other type of task. Message services are used to route involved electronic forms, messages, and documents.

Workgroup — For Windows NT, a workgroup is a collection of computers that are grouped for viewing purposes. Each workgroup is identified by a unique name. In Microsoft networks, a workgroup is implemented for a collection of related computers, such as a department, that doesn’t require the uniform security and coordination of a domain. See also domain.

Workgroup Advertising — A method of implementing browsing for large NetWare networks that include computers running Windows 98 or Windows 95

Working set — Every program running can use a portion of physical memory, its working set, which is the current number of physical memory bytes used by or allocated by a process.

Workstation — The most popular client that gets services from the server. LANs support personal computers (with CPU and RAM) as workstations, not dumb terminals as workstations.

Workstation — (1) A powerful personal computer, usually running a preemptive, multitasking operating system like UNIX or Windows NT.
(2) A terminal or personal computer, usually connected to a mainframe or to a network, on which a user can run applications. A workstation generally cannot share its resources with other network nodes or a host computer. However, on a LAN Manager network, an OS/2 workstation can share resources by invoking the peer server option. See also server.
(3) Any networked Macintosh or PC using server resources. See also member server; primary domain controller; backup domain controller.

Workstation Manager — A program that creates an internal list of the workstations available for backup.

Workstation service — Provides network connections and communications.

Workstation Software — See Client Software.

Workstation Utilities — Utilities executed from the workstation.

World Wide Web — A collection of Internet servers providing hypertext-formatted documents for Internet clients running Web browsers. The World Wide Web provided the first easy-to-use graphical interface for the Internet and is largely responsible for the Internet’s explosive growth. Also called the Web, it uses the HTTP protocol to retrieve Web pages and other resources from Web servers. Pages on the Web usually contain hyperlinks to other pages, documents, and files. This term also embraces the software, protocols, conventions, and information that enable hypertext and multimedia publishing of resources on different computers around the world. See also Internet; HTML.

WOSA — Acronym for Microsoft Windows Open System Architecture, which specifies an open set of APIs for integrating Windows-based computers with back-end services on a broad range of vendor’s systems. WOSA consists of an extensible set of APIs that enable Windows-based desktop applications to access available information without having to know anything about the type of network in use, the types of computers in the enterprise, or types of back-end services available. As a result, if the network computers or services change, the desktop applications built using WOSA won’t require rewriting. See also API.

WOW — Acronym for Win16 on Win32. The translation of Windows 3.1-based application calls to standard mode for RISC-based computers and 386 enhanced mode for x86-based computers.

Wrap — To continue to the next line rather than stopping when the cursor reaches the end of the current line.

WRITE — A login script command to display messages when executing a login script.

Write Right — A property right that allows a property value to be added or changed.

Write-behind caching — Temporarily storing data in memory before it is written on disk for permanent storage

Wrong Frame Type — A common problem with Ethernet networks that occurs when a workstation is not using the frame type supported by the server.

WSGEN — A NetWare 3.1x command used to create the IPX.COM program that is used with the Network shell (NETX) to connect a workstation to a file server.

WSUPDATE — This NetWare utility updates workstation files from the file server. It should be run from the system login script.

WSUPGRD — A NetWare 4 command-line utility used at a workstation to upgrade the IPX.COM file (driver) to the corresponding ODI driver.