Terms Letter: L
LAN
Local Area Network. A network connecting computers in a relatively small area such as a building. A LAN can be connected to the internet and can also be configured as an intranet.
Leased line
A dedicated connection line for the transfer of data. The highest speed data connections require a leased line. It is a dedicated telecommunications connection to the Internet for high speed data connections.
Link
An end-to-end transmission path provided by the cabling infrastructure.
Linux
An Open Source implementation of UNIX initiated by Linus Torvalds, which runs on many different hardware platforms including Intel, Sparc®, PowerPC, and Alpha Processors. Linux and FreeBSD are very often used by web hosting companies as their operating systems.
Login
Noun: The account name used to gain access to a computer system. Usually it is a sequence of characters and digits. It is not secret as opposed to the password. Verb: The act of entering a computer system.
LOL
Chat acronym for «Laughing Out Loud»
Lossless
A term describing a data compression algorithm which retains all the information in the data, allowing it to be recovered perfectly by decompression.
Lossy
Data compression algorithms that assume some of the data in a image file is unnecessary and can be eliminated without affecting the perceived image quality. It is suitable for audio, video and image compression.
LZW compression
Lempel-Zev-Welch, a graphics compression technique that creates a dictionary of «phrases» found in an image to reduce the data needed to describe an image. Best on repetitive images and those with fewer colors. LZW is used with GIF images.