Firewire
Very similar to USB but is capable of much faster data transfer speeds. Mainly used for transferring large audio and video files to external components, such as mp3 players and digital cameras. Firewire was first created by Apple but is now also being commonly used by many windows computers.

Category 5e
Short for Category 5 cabling, a commonly available and standardised cable which has four twisted copper pairs within a coloured jacket. Cat5 cabling supports frequencies up to 100 MHz and speeds up to 1000 Mbps

USB
Stands for ‘Universal Serial Bus’ and is a ‘plug and play’ connection to a computer. Most external hardware is connected to a computer through the USB port. It is a very versatile way of sending data to and from external devices, but is not as fast as the Firewire connection.

Wireless
A way for the computer to connect to something external without the need for wires. This can be to a phone using a Bluetooth dongle or to the internet using a wireless network. A wireless is a lot more practical simply because you don’t have wires all over the place, but the major negative is that they are subject to interference which can slow download speeds.

Encryption
Encrypting something will make it not readable or understandable without special knowledge. Converting simple text into code, e.g. HELLO >> OYHSAEDALADLSGO
All of the letters from the first word are still in the second word but no one would know unless they knew that every third letter should only be used. Obviously computer encryption is much more complex than this, but this is pretty much how it is done.

Ethernet
The most common and simplest way of networking two computers to create a LAN (Local area network). A type of network cabling allowing theoretical data transfers of up to 100Mb per second.