1/19/2017 22CommonNetworkJargonTermsExplained

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22 Common Network Jargon Terms Explained

Computer networking is lled with jargon that isnt self-explanatory. Heres a quick overview of many of the terms youll see
when you glance at the network status information on any device.

Were denitely simplifying things a bit here this isnt an in-depth look at any one term.

ISP

Your Internet service provider is the company that provides you with your Internet connection. For example, your ISP may
be Comcast, Time Warner, or whatever other company youre paying each month.

LAN

A local area network is a small network thats conned to a local area. For example, your home network or an oce
network is a LAN.

WAN

A wide area network is a larger network that covers a wider area. Your ISP provides you with a connection to their own
WAN, which connects to the Internet.

IP Address

An Internet Protocol address, or IP address, is a numerical address that corresponds to your computer on a network. When
a computer wants to connect to another computer, it connects to that computers IP address.

IPv4 and IPv6

There are two types of IP address in common use. Older IPv4 (IP version 4) addresses are the most common, followed by
newer IPv6 (IP version 6) addresses. IPv6 is necessary because we just dont have enough IPv4 addresses for all the people
and devices in the world.

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Router

A router is a device that passes trac back and forth. You likely have a home router. Its that routers job to pass outgoing
trac from your local devices to the Internet, and to pass incoming trac from the Internet to your devices.

Gateway

A gateway is a device that routes trac between networks. For example, at home, your router is your gateway. It provides
a gateway between your LAN and WAN.

NAT

Network Address Translation, or NAT, is used by routers to share a single IP address among many devices. For example,
you probably have a wireless router at home that creates a Wi-Fi network your laptops, smartphones, tablets, and other
devices connect to. Your ISP provides you with a single IP address thats reachable from anywhere on the Internet,
sometimes called a public IP address.

Your router creates a LAN and assigns local IP addresses to your devices. The router then functions as a gateway.To
devices outside your LAN, it appears as if you have one device (the router) using a single IP address.

DHCP

The dynamic host conguration protocol allows computers to automatically request and be assigned IP addresses and
other network settings. For example, when you connect your laptop or smartphone to your Wi-Fi network, your device asks
the router for an IP address using DHCP and the router assigns an IP address. This simplies things you dont have to set
up static IP addresses manually.

Hostnames

A hostname is a human-readable label that points to a device connected to a network. For example, on your home
network, your Windows computers hostname may be WINDOWSPC. Your other devices can connect to WINDOWSPC and
will be pointed at that computers local IP address.

Domain Name

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Domain names are the base part of website names. like howtogeek.com or google.com. Note that domain names are just
another type of hostname.

DNS

The domain name system is how computers convert human-readable domain names and hostnames to numerical IP
addresses. When you type howtogeek.com into your web browsers address bar, your computer contacts its DNS server
and the DNS server replies with the numerical IP address of How-To Geeks server, which is what your computer connects
to.

Youre likely using your ISPs DNS servers by default, but you can use third-party DNS servers if you prefer.

Ethernet

Ethernet is the standard wired network technology in use almost everywhere today. If your computer is connected to a
network via a cable, its likely using an Ethernet cable. That cable plugs into an Ethernet port on your computer.

Network Interface / Network Adapter

Your computers wired Ethernet connection and Wi-Fi connection are basically both network interfaces. If your laptop was
connected to both a wired connection and a Wi-Fi network, each network interface would have its own IP address. Each is a
dierent connection.

Network interfaces can also be implemented entirely in software, so they dont always directly correspond to hardware
devices.

localhost

The hostname localhost always corresponds to the device youre using. This uses the loopback network interface a
network interface implemented in software to connect directly to your own PC.

localhost actually points to the IPv4 address 127.0.0.1 or the IPv6 address ::1 . Each always corresponds to the current
device.

MAC Address

Each network interface has a media access control address, or MAC address also known as a physical address. This is a
unique identier designed to identify dierent computers on a network. MAC addresses are usually assigned when a
manufacturer creates a network device.

For example, when you visit an airport and use 30 minutes of free Wi-Fi before being kicked o and refused access to
further Wi-FI without paying, the airports Wi-Fi network has likely noted your devices MAC address and is using it to track
your PC and prevent you from taking advantage of more free time. MAC addresses could also be used to assign static IP
addresses to specic devices, so theyd always get the same IP address when they connected to a router with DHCP.

MAC addresses are actually more uid in practice, as you can change your network interfaces MAC address. (Yes, this
means you can often gain access to more free airport Wi-Fi by changing your devices MAC address.)

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Port

When an application wants to send or receive trac, it has to use a numbered port between 1 to 65535. This is how you
can have multiple applications on a computer using the network and each application knows which trac is for it.

Standard HTTP uses port 80, so when youre connecting to http://howtogeek.com, youre really making an HTTP connection
to port 80 on howtogeek.com. The web server software on howtogeek.com is listening to trac arriving on port 80. You
could attempt to connect on port 81 by plugging http://howtogeek.com:81/ into your web browser, but you wouldnt get a
response because the web server software isnt listening on port 81.

Protocol TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc.

Protocols are dierent ways of communicating over the Internet. TCP and UDP are the most common protocols. The ICMP
protocol is also used, but primarily so network devices can check each others status. Dierent protocols are ideal for
dierent types of communication.

Packet

A packet is a unit of data sent between devices. When you load a web page, your computer sends packets to the server
requesting the web page and the server responds with many dierent packets of its own, which your computer stitches
together to form the web page. The packet is the basic unit of data that computers on a network exchange.

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Firewall

Arewallis a piece of software or hardware that blocks certain types of trac. For example, a rewall could block
incoming trac on a certain port or block all incoming trac except trac coming from a specic IP address.

HTTP

The hypertext transfer protocol is the standard protocol modern web browsers and the web itself uses. FTP and BitTorrent
are examples of alternative protocols.

URL

A uniform resource locator, or URL, is also known as a web address. The current URL is displayed in your web browsers
address bar. For example, http://howtogeek.com/article is an URL that tells your computer to use the hypertext transfer
protocol HTTP to connect to the server at howtogeek.com and ask for the le named article in the root directory. (The
computer contacts its DNS server to nd the IP address howtogeek.com is associated with and connects using the TCP
protocal on port 80.)

These arent the only bits of network jargon youll come across, but they should be most of the most common.

Image Credit: Cloned Milkmen on Flickr

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