Networking Abbreviations
113 abbreviations · part of Technology & Computer Abbreviations
Abbreviations from computer networking: internet protocols (IP, TCP, UDP, HTTP), addressing and naming (DNS, DHCP, NAT), network types (LAN, WAN, VPN), routing and switching (BGP, OSPF, VLAN, MPLS), Wi-Fi security, and email and file-transfer protocols. Most protocol names are defined in IETF Request for Comments (RFC) documents or IEEE 802 standards, and engineers usually pronounce them letter by letter.
| Abbreviation | Stands for | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AP | Access point (wireless) | A device that broadcasts a Wi-Fi network and bridges wireless clients onto a wired LAN. |
| ARP | Address Resolution Protocol | Finds the MAC address that belongs to an IPv4 address on the local network by broadcasting a question such as "who has 192.168.1.1?" and caching the reply. |
| ARPANET | Advanced Research Projects Agency Network | The packet-switched network funded by the US Defense Department's ARPA that became the forerunner of the internet. |
| ASN | Autonomous system number | A unique number identifying an autonomous system, meaning a network under one administrative control with its own routing policy, in BGP routing. |
| ATM | Asynchronous Transfer Mode | A cell-switching network technology that carried voice, video and data in fixed 53-byte cells over telecom backbones and DSL lines in the 1990s and 2000s. |
| BGP | Border Gateway Protocol | The routing protocol that holds the internet together, letting autonomous systems such as ISPs, cloud providers and large companies announce which IP prefixes they can… |
| CGNAT | Carrier-grade NAT | NAT performed inside an internet provider's network, so many customers share a pool of public IPv4 addresses and each home router receives a private or shared address… |
| CIDR | Classless Inter-Domain Routing | A way of writing IP address ranges as an address plus a prefix length, such as 192.168.1.0/24, where /24 means the first 24 bits identify the network. |
| CIFS | Common Internet File System | Microsoft's mid-1990s name for its dialect of the SMB file-sharing protocol, promoted at the time as an open standard for sharing files across the internet. |
| CNAME | Canonical name (record) | Makes one domain name an alias for another in DNS, so www.example.com can point to example.com or to a hosting provider's hostname. |
| CRC | Cyclic redundancy check | An error-detecting code calculated from a block of data and appended to it, so the receiver can spot accidental corruption. |
| CSMA/CD | Carrier-sense multiple access with collision detection | The media access method of classic shared Ethernet: a device listens for silence before transmitting, detects when another device transmits at the same moment, stops… |
| DDNS | Dynamic DNS | Automatically updates a DNS record whenever a network's public IP address changes, so a fixed hostname always points to a home or small-office connection even though… |
| DHCP | Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol | Automatically assigns an IP address, subnet mask, default gateway and DNS servers to devices when they join a network, so nobody has to configure them by hand. |
| DMZ | Demilitarized zone | Area in which military forces and installations are prohibited by agreement, usually a buffer between hostile states. |
| DNS | Domain Name System | The internet's distributed directory that translates names such as example.com into IP addresses. |
| DNSSEC | Domain Name System Security Extensions | Adds cryptographic signatures to DNS records so resolvers can verify that answers really come from the domain's owner and were not forged or altered in transit. |
| DoH | DNS over HTTPS | Sends DNS lookups inside encrypted HTTPS connections, usually on port 443, so ISPs and others on the network cannot see or tamper with the domains a user looks up. |
| DoT | DNS over TLS | Encrypts DNS queries with TLS on a dedicated port, 853, protecting lookups from eavesdropping and tampering between a device and its resolver. |
| EIGRP | Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol | An advanced distance-vector routing protocol developed by Cisco that uses the DUAL (Diffusing Update Algorithm) to keep loop-free backup routes ready, giving very fast… |
| FQDN | Fully qualified domain name | A complete domain name that specifies a host's exact place in the DNS hierarchy, such as mail.example.com, including every label up to the top-level domain. |
| FTP | File Transfer Protocol | A long-standing protocol for uploading and downloading files between a client and a server, using separate connections for commands (port 21) and data. |
| FTPS | FTP Secure | Classic FTP with TLS encryption added, either negotiated with an AUTH TLS command on port 21 (explicit mode) or required from the start on port 990 (implicit mode). |
| GRE | Generic Routing Encapsulation | A simple tunneling protocol that wraps one network packet inside another, letting routers carry traffic such as multicast or non-IP protocols across an IP network. |
| HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol | The request-response protocol browsers use to fetch web pages, images and API data from servers. |
| HTTPS | Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure | HTTP carried inside an encrypted TLS connection, so passwords, card numbers and page contents cannot be read or altered by anyone between the browser and the server. |
| IANA | Internet Assigned Numbers Authority | The function that manages the DNS root zone, allocates IP address blocks and AS numbers to regional registries, and maintains registries of protocol parameters such as… |
| ICANN | Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers | The California-based nonprofit that coordinates the internet's unique identifiers, overseeing the DNS root, accrediting domain registrars and approving new top-level… |
| ICMP | Internet Control Message Protocol | Carries error reports and diagnostic messages for IP rather than user data, for example "destination unreachable" or "time exceeded". |
| IETF | Internet Engineering Task Force | The open standards body that develops most core internet protocols, including TCP/IP, HTTP, TLS and DNS, through working groups that anyone can join. |
| IMAP | Internet Message Access Protocol | Lets email apps read and manage messages that stay stored on the mail server, keeping folders, read status and deletions synchronized across phones, laptops and webmail. |
| IP | Internet Protocol | The network-layer protocol that gives every device on the internet a numeric address and routes data in packets from source to destination. |
| IPsec | Internet Protocol Security | A suite of protocols that authenticates and encrypts IP packets, widely used for site-to-site VPNs between offices and clouds and for some remote-access VPNs. |
| IPv4 | Internet Protocol version 4 | Uses 32-bit addresses written as four decimal numbers separated by dots, such as 203.0.113.7, giving about 4.3 billion possible addresses. |
| IPv6 | Internet Protocol version 6 | Successor to IPv4 with 128-bit addresses written as hexadecimal groups separated by colons, such as 2001:db8::1, enough for roughly 340 undecillion addresses. |
| IRC | Internet Relay Chat | A text chat protocol in which users join channels, named with a # sign, on networks of linked servers. |
| IS-IS | Intermediate System to Intermediate System | A link-state interior routing protocol, similar in operation to OSPF, widely used inside large ISP and carrier backbones. |
| iSCSI | Internet Small Computer Systems Interface | Carries SCSI storage commands over TCP/IP, so a server can use a disk volume on a remote storage array as if it were a local drive. |
| ISP | Internet service provider | A company that connects homes and businesses to the internet over cable, fiber, DSL, mobile or satellite links, and usually supplies a modem or router, IP addresses and… |
| IXP | Internet exchange point | A facility where internet service providers, content companies and cloud networks connect to exchange traffic directly, usually across a shared switching platform… |
| L2TP | Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol | A tunneling protocol that carries PPP sessions across IP networks, used by ISPs and, combined with IPsec as L2TP/IPsec, for remote-access VPNs built into Windows, macOS… |
| LAN | Local area network | Connects computers, printers and other devices within a limited area such as a home, office or school building, usually over Ethernet cables and Wi-Fi. |
| LDAP | Lightweight Directory Access Protocol | An open protocol for querying and updating directory services that store users, groups, computers and their attributes. |
| MAC | Media access control (address) | A MAC address is the 48-bit hardware identifier assigned to every network interface, written as six pairs of hexadecimal digits such as 3C:22:FB:9A:10:4E. |
| MAN | Metropolitan area network | Covers a city or large campus, linking buildings and LANs over distances of a few to tens of kilometers, usually with fiber. |
| MPLS | Multiprotocol Label Switching | A forwarding technique in which routers send packets along predetermined paths using short labels instead of looking up the full IP address at every hop. |
| MQTT | MQTT (formerly MQ Telemetry Transport) | A lightweight publish-subscribe messaging protocol designed for sensors and devices on low-bandwidth or unreliable networks. |
| MSS | Maximum segment size | The largest amount of TCP payload a host is willing to receive in one segment, announced during the connection handshake. |
| MTA | Mail transfer agent | Server software that receives email and relays it toward the recipient's mail server using SMTP. |
| MTU | Maximum transmission unit | The largest packet, in bytes, that a network link can carry in one frame without fragmenting it. |
| MX | Mail exchanger (record) | Tells sending servers which mail servers accept email for a domain, each with a priority number; lower numbers are tried first. |
| NAT | Network Address Translation | Rewrites IP addresses in packets as they pass through a router, most often letting many devices with private addresses share one public IPv4 address. |
| NFS | Network File System | A distributed file system protocol that lets Unix and Linux machines mount directories from a remote server and use them as if they were local disks. |
| NFV | Network functions virtualization | Runs network services such as firewalls, load balancers, routers and mobile core functions as software on standard servers instead of dedicated appliances. |
| NOC | Network operations center | A staffed facility, often with wall-sized monitoring screens, where engineers watch an organization's networks and services around the clock, respond to outages and… |
| NS | Name server (record) | Lists the authoritative name servers for a domain or zone; the registry publishes these in the parent zone so resolvers know where to look the domain up. |
| NTP | Network Time Protocol | Synchronizes computer clocks over a network, usually to within milliseconds of Coordinated Universal Time, by exchanging timestamps with a hierarchy of time servers. |
| OSI | Open Systems Interconnection (model) | A seven-layer reference model that divides network communication into physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation and application layers. |
| OSPF | Open Shortest Path First | A link-state interior routing protocol in which every router builds a full map of the network and computes the best paths with Dijkstra's shortest-path-first algorithm. |
| P2P | Peer-to-peer | A network design in which participating computers act as both clients and servers, sharing files or resources directly instead of relying on a central server. |
| PAN | Personal area network | A very short-range network linking the devices around one person, such as a phone, smartwatch, wireless earbuds and laptop, typically within about 10 meters. |
| PAT | Port address translation | The most common form of NAT, in which many private devices share one public IP address and the router keeps their connections apart by rewriting source port numbers. |
| PDU | Protocol data unit | The generic name for a unit of data at a given layer of a network stack, including that layer's headers. |
| PoE | Power over Ethernet | Delivers electrical power and data over the same Ethernet cable, so access points, IP phones and security cameras need no separate power adapter. |
| PoP | Point of presence | A physical location, usually a data center or carrier hotel, where a network operator, CDN or cloud provider has equipment and connects to other networks or customers. |
| POP3 | Post Office Protocol version 3 | An email retrieval protocol that downloads messages from the server to a single device, traditionally deleting them from the server afterward. |
| PPPoE | Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet | Carries PPP sessions over Ethernet so DSL and some fiber ISPs can authenticate each subscriber with a username and password and assign an IP address. |
| PPTP | Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol | An early VPN protocol from a Microsoft-led consortium that tunnels PPP over IP using GRE. |
| PSK | Pre-shared key | A secret, usually a passphrase, configured on both sides of a connection in advance rather than exchanged through certificates or individual accounts. |
| PTR | Pointer (record) | Maps an IP address back to a hostname in DNS. |
| QoS | Quality of service | Techniques that classify and prioritize network traffic so time-sensitive flows such as voice and video get bandwidth and low latency ahead of bulk downloads. |
| QUIC | QUIC (originally Quick UDP Internet Connections) | A transport protocol that runs over UDP and merges TCP-style reliability, congestion control and TLS 1.3 encryption into one layer. |
| rDNS | Reverse DNS | Looks up the hostname associated with an IP address, the opposite of a normal DNS lookup. |
| RDP | Remote Desktop Protocol | Microsoft's protocol for viewing and controlling a Windows computer's desktop over a network, used by IT support, remote workers and administrators of Windows servers. |
| RFC | Request for Comments | A numbered document series that publishes internet standards, protocols and best practices, mostly through the IETF. |
| RIP | Routing Information Protocol | One of the oldest distance-vector routing protocols, in which routers periodically share their entire routing tables with neighbors and choose routes by hop count alone. |
| RIR | Regional internet registry | One of five organizations that allocate IP addresses and autonomous system numbers within a world region: AFRINIC (Africa), APNIC (Asia-Pacific), ARIN (North America)… |
| RTT | Round-trip time | The time for a packet to travel from sender to receiver and for the reply to come back, usually measured in milliseconds with ping. |
| SAN | Storage area network | A dedicated high-speed network that gives servers block-level access to shared disk arrays, so remote storage appears to each server as a locally attached drive. |
| SD-WAN | Software-defined wide area network | Manages the links between branch offices, data centers and cloud services centrally in software, steering each application's traffic over the best available connection… |
| SDN | Software-defined networking | An approach that separates the control plane, which decides where traffic should go, from the data plane, which forwards it, so a central software controller can… |
| SFTP | SSH File Transfer Protocol | Transfers and manages files over an encrypted SSH connection on port 22, using one channel for both commands and data. |
| SMB | Server Message Block | The file and printer sharing protocol of Windows networks, letting computers open, copy and lock files on shared folders and network drives. |
| SMTP | Simple Mail Transfer Protocol | The protocol mail servers use to send and relay email across the internet, and that email apps use to submit outgoing messages. |
| SNI | Server Name Indication | A TLS extension in which the browser names the website it wants at the start of an encrypted connection, letting one IP address host many HTTPS sites with different… |
| SNMP | Simple Network Management Protocol | Monitors and manages network devices such as routers, switches, printers and UPS units by reading counters and status values from them and receiving alerts called traps. |
| SOA | Start of authority (record) | The DNS record at the top of every zone that names the primary name server, the administrator's email address and timing values such as the serial number, refresh… |
| SPF | Shortest path first | The family of link-state routing algorithms, based on Edsger Dijkstra's 1959 algorithm, that routers running OSPF and IS-IS use to compute the lowest-cost path to every… |
| SRV | Service (record) | Advertises the hostname and port for a specific service, such as SIP calling, XMPP chat or Minecraft servers, together with priority and weight values that clients use… |
| SSH | Secure Shell | Encrypted protocol for logging in to remote computers, running commands and tunneling other traffic, normally on TCP port 22. |
| SSID | Service set identifier | The name of a Wi-Fi network, up to 32 bytes long, that appears in the list of available networks on phones and laptops. |
| STP | Shielded twisted pair | Twisted-pair network cable wrapped in foil or braided metal shielding that protects signals from electromagnetic interference. |
| STUN | Session Traversal Utilities for NAT | A protocol that lets a device behind NAT discover its public IP address and port by asking a server on the internet, so video calls and peer-to-peer apps can attempt… |
| TCP | Transmission Control Protocol | Provides reliable, ordered delivery of a byte stream between two hosts on top of IP. |
| TCP/IP | Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol | Name for the whole internet protocol suite, not just its two best-known protocols. |
| TFTP | Trivial File Transfer Protocol | A minimal file transfer protocol running over UDP port 69, with no authentication, directory listing or encryption. |
| TTL | Time to live | In IP, an 8-bit counter in each packet that every router decrements by one, so packets caught in a loop are discarded when it reaches zero. |
| UDP | User Datagram Protocol | A lightweight transport protocol that sends independent datagrams without setting up a connection, confirming delivery or guaranteeing order. |
| UPnP | Universal Plug and Play | A set of protocols that let devices on a home network discover each other and automatically open ports on the router, so game consoles, media servers and smart TVs work… |
| UTP | Unshielded twisted pair | The ordinary copper cable used for Ethernet, made of four pairs of wires twisted together to cancel interference, with no metal shielding. |
| VLAN | Virtual LAN | Splits one physical switch network into several isolated logical networks, so devices on different VLANs cannot talk directly without passing through a router or… |
| VNC | Virtual Network Computing | A cross-platform remote desktop system that sends screen images to a viewer and returns keyboard and mouse input, using the Remote Framebuffer (RFB) protocol. |
| VPN | Virtual private network | Creates an encrypted tunnel between a device and a remote network or server, so traffic crosses the internet as if over a private line. |
| VXLAN | Virtual Extensible LAN | An overlay technology that wraps Ethernet frames in UDP packets so layer 2 networks can stretch across a routed data center or cloud. |
| WAN | Wide area network | Spans large geographic distances, linking LANs in different cities or countries over leased lines, MPLS circuits, the internet or satellite links. |
| WAP | Wireless access point | A networking device that provides a Wi-Fi network and connects wireless clients to a wired network; it is the same thing as an AP. |
| WEP | Wired Equivalent Privacy | The original Wi-Fi encryption scheme in the 1997 IEEE 802.11 standard, based on the RC4 cipher with 40-bit or 104-bit keys. |
| WLAN | Wireless local area network | A local network whose devices connect by radio rather than cables, almost always using Wi-Fi under the IEEE 802.11 standards. |
| WPA | Wi-Fi Protected Access | A Wi-Fi security protocol introduced by the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2003 as an urgent replacement for the broken WEP standard. |
| WPA2 | Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 | The Wi-Fi security standard that implements IEEE 802.11i with AES-based CCMP encryption, introduced in 2004 and required on certified devices from 2006. |
| WPA3 | Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 | Announced by the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2018, WPA3 replaces the WPA2 pre-shared key handshake with SAE (Simultaneous Authentication of Equals), which resists offline… |
| WPS | Wi-Fi Protected Setup | A feature for joining devices to a Wi-Fi network without typing the password, either by pressing a button on the router or entering an eight-digit PIN. |
| XMPP | Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol | An open, XML-based protocol for instant messaging, presence and real-time communication between federated servers, much as email servers exchange mail. |
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