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Packet
While it may seem as though you send or receive a continuous stream of data every time you use the Internet, you don't. Instead, data is chopped up into pieces called packets. These packets contain information about which computer sent the data and where the data is going. If a packet runs into a problem during its trip, it can attempt to find another route. When all the packets get where they're going, the recipient computer puts them together again.
Plug-in
This term refers to a type of program that tightly integrates with a larger application to add a special capability to it. The larger app must be designed to accept plug-ins, and the software's maker usually publishes a design specification that enables people to write plug-ins for it. Two notable applications designed around a plug-in architecture are Adobe Photoshop and Netscape Navigator. Notable examples of plug-ins are Kai's Power Tools for Photoshop and Shockwave for Netscape Navigator.
POP
Post Office Protocol
The current champ in Internet email mailbox access standards, but its limitations--basically, you connect to a server and download all your messages, which are then deleted from the server--discourage flexibility. Of course, some clients let you leave all messages on the server, and/or refuse to download messages above a certain size. Still, as messages become longer--with multimedia (such as sound or video) objects and the likes--we'll want some flexibility in what we retrieve and when we retrieve it. That's where IMAP comes in. The current version of POP is POP3.
Proxy servers
A proxy server is a system that caches items from other servers to speed up access. On the Web, a proxy first attempts to find data locally, and if it's not there, fetches it from the remote server where the data resides permanently.