network computer (NC)
Network computers(NC) originate conceptually from the 1990s. The aim was to functionally adapt terminals to the Internet. They are servers that have their own local CPU power and communicate with a client, provide it with data or perform computing operations.
The network computers of the 1990s were diskless computers that downloaded their software from the Internet. They had a fast central processing unit (CPU), dynamic RAM, display, browser, scaled-down operating system such as Unix, Windows, OS/2, or MAC, and I/O units such as keyboard, computer mouse, and network port. For operation, the network computer required fast access via the Internet, to file servers, database servers, mail servers, video servers, Javaapplet servers, WWW servers and various other servers.
Network computers were to be used equally in commercial Internet and intranet. They could be divided into three groups; the group of desktop NCs with access to WWW, e-mail, spreadsheet, etc., a second group for NC- TV, the set-top boxes for Internet television( IPTV), entertainment, games and other interactive video applications, and a final group of NC-Phones for e-mail and limited browsing.
Certain standards were agreed upon for network computers. For example, NCs should support protocols in the TCP/ IP protocol family such as Secure Socket Layer ( SSL), File Transfer Protocol ( FTP), Telnet, Network File System( NFS), User Datagram Protocol ( UDP), and Simple Network Management Protocol( SNMP), as well as mail protocols such as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ( SMTP), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP4) and Post Office Protocol (POP3), WWW standards( HTML, HTTP, Java), multimedia standards such as JPEG, Graphics Interchange Format( GIF) and Waveform Audio File Format(WAV), and security standards such as ISO 7816 smart cards.
The minimum requirements that a network computer must meet were originally developed by well-known computer companies including IBM, Apple, Sun. They were adopted and updated by The Open Group( TOG). The NC concept found a new approach in 2007 in the netbooks and the nettops, which are optimized for network applications.