Uploading and downloading
- This article is about the computer terms. Download is also an industrial band led by CEvin Key. Download is also a British heavy metal festival. Uploading is also a hypothetical transfer of a human mind into a computer.
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The terms uploading and downloading are used to describe transferring data electronically, usually between two computers. They often create confusion, as their definitions depend on the context.
The person/computer sending the information refers to the transfer as an upload, while the person/computer receiving the information refers to it as a download.
These are the definitions used by ISPs. If the customer is sending information, it is an upload; if they are receiving information, it is a download.
Most people use the term download when they are receiving a file, and upload when they are sending a file over the Internet.
In either case, information is transferred both ways to manage the download. This is often the reason people get confused.
The act of transferring a file from one web server to another, while technically a simultaneous download and upload, is often called sideloading.
An exception is when talking about data transfers between space vehicles and ground stations; in this case, every transfer from the space vehicle is a download, while every transfer to it is an upload.
As a noun, a download or upload is the information transferred or the act of transferring it.
In surfing the World Wide Web the term downloading is not usually used for simply bringing up a web page, but rather for transferring a larger file and/or directly saving it. In a network, the term downloading is not usually used for copying files from one network device to another even if one computer is acting as a host (see copy.)
In a more complicated way, "download" means, when you are surfing the web, usually transferring
data from the server of the web site you are viewing, to your own. This can either be a program, game, or music, which is saving it permanently to your hard disk, or it could mean transferring images or text from a web page to your computer and downloading them only to a temporary folder.
Upload basically means the opposite of download. Upload means transferring a file from your computer to a server on the internet. Let's take the example of a web site and that you're using a web host to host your site. When you update your, let's say, home page and want to publish it, you go to the upload client of your web host. Then, in the upload client, you select "Browse" and look in the folder you saved the home page in, and select it. Then you select the "Upload" button and your computer sends your home page to your web host's server.
Jargon
For better or worse, the term download has been adopted in different ways by different groups of people. In corporate America, download is often used as both a noun and a verb, refering to the act of informing others of important information. Thus, one can download one's boss on updates from another office, or, similarly, recieve a download. Many people have pointed out that this usage is based on an incorrect metaphor; firstly, usage for the computer term download efers to information, not people. That is, one downloads information to a computer, not the computer itself. Secondly, this usage of download would be better served by upload, though that term is less well known. Despite these issues, this usage of the word shows no sign of stopping.
See also
To upload files to Wikipedia, or for instructions on this, see the Special:Upload page.
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