Computer Networking Acronym Glossary

Q. I was wondering whether the glossary of terms on the webpage is exhaustive as far as examinable terms go?
A.The intention was that it tried to be exhaustive, but if there's something you suspect has been missed off, do discuss it with me and I can probably clarify.

Note: The official syllabus in on the course syllabus tab, but is superseded in a few places: as a first-time lecturer of this course, I was uncertain of the pacing and ended up missing off the topics that I've explicitly listed as not covered (hence not examinable). DJG.

Please let me have suggestions for missing terms or corrections by email (djg11@cam).

Items are prefixed with a priority. Priority 1 terms should be understood by all. Familiarity with priority 3 terms should not be needed for examination purposes.

Items

1; ARP and RARP; Address resolution protocol and its reverse.
1; TCP and SYN/ACK;
1; IP; Internet Protocol;
1; UDP; user datagram protocol;
1; ICMP; Internet Control Message Protocol;
1; RED; Random early discard; A congestion notification system;
1; ECN; Explicit congestion notification; A congestion notification system;
1; NAT; network address translation; A means to share IP addresses
1; DNS, DNSSEC, RR; Domain name server, secure version and resource records
1; DHCP; dynamic host configuration protocol;
1; VPN; virtual private network;
1; VLAN; virtual local-area network;
1; RTT; round trip time
1; MTU and MSS; maxiumum transfer unit and maximums segment side; limits on L2 and L4 packet size
1; L2 or L3 PDU; protocol data unit ; a packet at a given protocol layer
1; Bytestream; The service offered by TCP
1; TTL; time to live
1; MAC; media access control protocol; rules for sending on a shared medium
1; MAC address; address used at L2, typically 48 bits
1; LAN + WAN; local + wide area network;
1; NIC; network interface card; typically not a separate card these days --- more likely to be an IP block on a SoC
1; ROM; read-only memory
1; PHY; physical layer
1; DLL; data-link layer
1; IP; internept protocol
1; IP Address; layer 3 address, 32 bits for IPv4. 4x larger for IPv6.
1; BGP; boarder gateway protocol;
1; OSPF; open shortest-path first; a routing protocol
1; IGP; interiour gateway protocol;
1; CDN and load balancing; contend delivery network
1; URL or URI; uniform resource locator or indicator (web address if starts http).
1; HTTP and HTML; hypertext transfer protocol and and language
1; CRC; cyclic redundancy check; like a checksum but far more sensitive to errors (lower criticial path in h/w implementations too)
1; TLS and SSL/ssh; transport-layer security, secure socket layer, secure shell;
1; Simplex, Duplex and Half-duplex;
1; Unicast, broadcast, multicast, anycast;
1; Mbps, MBps and Mbaud; megabits per second, megabytes per second and millions of signalling intervals per second at the PHY level
1; RTT; round-trip time;
1; FDM and TDM; frequency and time-division multiplexing;
1; WDM; wavelength division multiplexing;
1; (SDM); spatial multiplexing - not a common term of art, but nonetheless a very important aspect; For example, having two fibres next to each other implements SDM!
1; RTS and CST; request-to-send and clear-to-send;
1; CSMA and CSMA/CD; carrier-sense multiple access and collision-detect;
1; SLAAC and CIDR? - not lectured 25/26;
1; flow; ; A concatenation of source and destination port and MAC addresses into a single opaque identifier/concept
1; localhost; ; alias for the current endpoint, regardless of its actual name. IP address 127.0.0.1;
1; ACK and NACK; acknowledge and negative acknowledge;
1; Ping and pong; ICMP connectivty test message and (colloquial) response.
1; windows CWND and RWND; for a transport protocol
1; GBN; Go-back-N; a transport protocol recovery mechanism
1; ARQ;
1; SR or SACK; selective repeat/acknowledgement
1; ISN; Initial sequence number
1; TX and RX
1; AIMD; Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease
1; FQ; RR and WRR;
1; QUIC;
1; E2E; end-to-end
1; ISP; Internet service provider
1; HOL blocking;
1; DASH; Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP
1; TLD; Top-level domain
1; CDMA; carrier-detect multiple access
1; QUIC; Quick UDP Internet Connections
1; CBR + VBR; Constant/variable bit-rate multimedia streaming

Priority 2

2; websockets - not to be confused with sockets;
2; PPP; point-to-point protocol
2; uPNP; universal plug-and-play
2; NFS; network file system
2; SMTP and POP; Email not lectured 25/26
2; RFC and IETF
2; RSSI; Receive strength/signal indication; metric for amount of PHY signal arriving at the receiver.
2; CNAME, NS and MX;
2; DDoS attack,
2; HTTP Post Get Head Put Redirect;
2; ARQ; Automatic repeat request; primary basis of a reliable transport protocol
2; SACK; selective acknowledgment in a transport protocol

2; HFC; hybrid fibre/coax cable TV (CATV) WAN
2; PON; passive optical network (fused fibre system typically serving 100 houses) - 100 way split traded for a 20 dB path loss
2; NRZ; non-return to zero (serial digital bits)
2; NRZI; non-return to zero invert on ones (serial bits where a change indicates a 'one') - polarity insensitive
2; PCM; pulse code modulation - digital audio
2; P2P point-to-point protocol (not lectured?)
2; GBN; Go-back N in a transport protocol
2; MPEG + JPEG; Video coding standards

Priority 3

3; SCTP; MTCP; RTP; SST; RDP; DCCP ... not lectured
3; SDH and Sonet;
3; QPSK; quadrature phase-shift keying; Separate amplitude modulation of a sine and cosine carrier of the same frequency transmitted together (more energy efficient than using many more amplitude levels on just a sine wave carrier).
3; OFDM;
3; STUN + TURN firewall/NAT crossing protocols were not lectured.