Glossary of Internet Terms

AAP

Address Allocation Protocol

AD

Area Director

ADSL

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line

AfNOG

African Network Operations Group

AfriNIC

African Network Information Centre

API

Application Programming Interface

APNIC

Asia Pacific Network Information Centre

ARIN

American Registry for Internet Numbers

ARP

Address Resolution Protocol

AS

Autonomous System

ASN

Autonomous System Number

ASP

Application Service Provider

ATM

Asynchronous Transfer Mode

BCP

Best Current Practices

BGP

Border Gateway Protocol

BoF

Birds of a Feather

ccTLD

country code Top-Level Domain

CGN

Carrier Grade NAT (Network Address Translation)

CDN

Content Distribution Network: a network of servers that improves the timeliness and availability of Internet content. (sometimes also called a “Content Delivery Network”)

CPE

Customer Provided Equipment

DARPA

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

DDoS

Distributed Denial of Service

DHCP

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

DHT

Distributed Hash Table

DNS

Domain Name System

DNSSEC

Domain Name System Security Extensions

DOCSIS

Data over Cable Service Interface Specification

DSL

Digital Subscriber Line

DTN

Delay-Tolerant Networking

EPP

Extensible Provisioning Protocol

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

FTP

File Transfer Protocol

gTLD

generic Top-Level Domain

HIP

Host Identity Protocol

HMAC

Hash Message Authentication Code

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

IAB

Internet Architecture Board

IAD

IETF Administrative Director

IANA

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

IAOC

IETF Administrative Oversight Committee

IASA

IETF Administrative Support Activity

ICANN

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

ICMP

Internet Control Message Protocol

ID

Internet Draft

IDN

Internationalized Domain Name

IDNAbis

Internationalized Domain Name in Applications (Revised)

IEEE

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IESG

Internet Engineering Steering Group

IETF

Internet Engineering Task Force

IP

Internet Protocol

IPR

Intellectual Property Rights

IPsec

Internet Protocol security

IPv4

Internet Protocol version 4

IPv6

Internet Protocol version 6

IRSG

Internet Research Steering Group

IRTF

Internet Research Task Force

IS-IS

Intermediate system to intermediate system

ISOC

Internet Society

ISP

Internet Service Provider

ITU-T

International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication Standardization Sector

IXP

Internet Exchange Point

JWT

Joint Working Team

LACNIC

Latin American and Caribbean Network Coordination Centre

LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

LDP

Label Distribution Protocol

LTE

Long Term Evolution is a project of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to define the latest standard for mobile network technology

LIR

Local Internet Registry

L2TP

Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol

MAC

Message Authentication Code

MD5

Message Digest Algorithm

MPLS

Multiprotocol Label Switching

MPLS TE

Multiprotocol Label Switching Traffic Engineering

MPLS-TP

Multiprotocol Label Switching-Transport Profile

MTU

Maximum Transmission Unit

NAT

Network Address Translation

NAT-PMP

Network Address Translation-Port Mapping Protocol

NAT-PT

Network Address Translation-Protocol Translation

NOC

Network Operations Centre

NomCom

Nominations Committee

NREN

National Research and Education Network

NSF

National Science Foundation

NSRC

Network Startup Resource Centre

OASIS

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards

OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OSI

Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model

OS

Operating System

OSS

Open Source Software

QoS

Quality of Service

PI

Provider Independent

PIM

Protocol Independent Multicast

PIM-SM

Protocol Independent Multicast-Sparse Mode

PKIX

Public-Key Infrastructure

POP

Point of Presence

P2P

Peer-to-Peer

RFC

Request For Comments

RFID

Radio-Frequency Identification

RFP

Request For Proposals

RG

Research Group

RIPE NCC

Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre

RIR

Regional Internet Registry

SDO

Standards Development Organization

SDP

Session Description Protocol

SHA-1

Secure Hash Algorithm

SIP

Session Initiation Protocol

SNMP

Simple Network Management Protocol

SSH

Secure Shell (protocol)

STUN

Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol [UDP] Through Network Address Translators [NATs]

TCP/IP

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

TLD

Top-Level Domain

TLS

Transport Layer Security

T-MPLS

Transport-Multiprotocol Label Switching

TTL

Time To Live

UDP

User Datagram Protocol

UNDP

United Nations Development Programme

UPnP

Universal Plug and Play

URI

Uniform Resource Identifier

URL

Uniform Resource Locator

VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol

VPN

Virtual Private Network

VSAT

Very Small Aperture Terminal

W3C

World Wide Web Consortium

WG

Working Group

WLAN

Wireless Local Area Network

WPAN

Wireless Personal Area Network

XML

Extensible Markup Language

XML-RPC

Extensible Markup Language – Remote Procedure Call