Jargon Buster

Cloud Computing

At the heart of cloud computing is the concept of infrastructure convergence and shared services. The new type of data centre environment enables enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with easier management and less maintenance. It also makes it easier to quickly adjust resources, servers, storage, and networking, to meet varying business demands.

Cloud computing providers deliver applications (Word, Excel, Outlook, as examples) via the internet, which are accessed by desktop web browsers and mobile apps.

In cloud computing business software and data are stored on servers at remote locations, which dependent network infrastructure, can be anywhere in the world.

The dark cloud on the horizon is the potential for a cloud provider to unexpectedly cease trading, or have a major outage. In much the same way that your business will have a disaster plan in place for flood and fire disaster recovery, it makes sense to ensure that your business has alternative plans in place should your cloud disappear?

HWIC

High speed WAN Interface Card

Gbic

The small form-factor pluggable (SFP) or Mini-GBIC is a compact, hot-pluggable transceiver used for both telecommunication and data communications applications. It interfaces a network device mother board (for a switch, router, media converter or similar device) to a fibre optic or copper networking cable. It is a popular industry format jointly developed and supported by many network component vendors. SFP transceivers are designed to support SONET, Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and other communications standard.

OSI Model

The OSI model defines internet working in terms of a vertical stack of seven layers. The upper layers of the OSI model represent software that implements network services like encryption and connection management. The lower layers of the OSI model implement more hardware-oriented functions like routing, addressing, and flow control.
In the OSI model, data communication starts with the top layer at the sending side, travels down the OSI model stack to the bottom layer, then traverses the network connection to the bottom layer on the receiving side, and up its OSI model stack.
The OSI model was introduced in 1984. Although it was designed to be an abstract model, the OSI model remains a practical framework for today's key network technologies like Ethernet and protocols like IP.
Also Known As: Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model, OSI seven layer model
Examples:
Internet Protocol (IP) corresponds to the Network layer of the OSI model, layer three. TCP and UDP correspond to OSI model layer four, the Transport layer. Lower layers of the OSI model are represented by technologies like Ethernet. Higher layers of the OSI model are represented by application protocols like TCP and UDP.

Packet

A packet is a unit of binary data capable of being routed through a computer network. To improve communication performance and reliability, each message sent between two network devices is often subdivided into packets by the underlying hardware and software.

LAN

A (LAN) local area network provides networking capability to a group of computers in close proximity to each other such as in an office building, a school, or a home. A LAN is useful for sharing resources like files, printers, games or other applications. A LAN in turn often connects to other LANs, and to the Internet or other WAN.

WAN

A WAN spans a large geographic area, such as a City, county or country. WANs often connect multiple smaller networks, such as local area networks (LANs)

The world's most popular WAN is the Internet. Some segments of the Internet, like VPN-based extranets, are also WANs in themselves. Finally, many WANs are corporate or research networks that utilize leased lines

IP

The Internet Protocol is responsible for addressing hosts and routing ‘data’ packets from a source host to the destination host across one or more IP networks. The Internet Protocol defines the addressing system in two functions; it both identifies the hosts and provides a logical location service. Each packet is tagged with a header that contains the meta-data for delivery; also called encapsulation.
The design principles of the Internet protocols assume network infrastructures are by default unreliable; errors can occur in any single network element or transmission medium and that the network is dynamic in terms of availability of links and nodes. No central monitoring or performance measurement facility exists that tracks or maintains the state of the network. For the benefit of reducing network complexity, the intelligence in the network is purposely mostly located in the end nodes of each data transmission. Routers in the transmission path simply forward packets to the next known local gateway matching the routing prefix for the destination address. Since routing is dynamic for every packet the network maintains no path data of prior packets; it is possible that packets are routed over a longer and shorter paths to their destination, resulting in improper sequencing at the receiver. As a consequence of this design, the Internet Protocol only provides best effort delivery only. In network architectural language it is a connection-less protocol. The lack of reliability permits various error conditions, such data corruption, packet loss and duplication, as well as out-of-order packet delivery.
The only assistance that the Internet Protocol provides in Version 4 (IPv4) is to ensure that the IP packet header is error-free is through computation of a checksum at the routing nodes.
IPv6, on the other hand, has abandoned the use of IP header checksums for the benefit of more rapid forwarding through routing elements in the network.
The resolution or correction of any of these reliability issues is the responsibility of an upper layer protocol. For example, to ensure in-order delivery the upper layer may have to cache data until it can be passed to the application.
In addition to issues of reliability, this dynamic nature and the diversity of the Internet and its components provide no guarantee that any particular path is actually capable of, or suitable for, performing the data transmission requested, so an application must assure that it uses proper transmission characteristics. Some of this responsibility also lies in the upper layer protocols between application and IP.
A technical constraint of a given link is the size of data packets allowed; maximum transmission unit (MTU) size of the local link
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is an example of a protocol that will adjust its segment size to be smaller than the MTU. User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) disregard MTU size thereby forcing IP to fragment oversized datagrams.

The Internet Protocol is one of the determining elements that define the Internet. The dominant internet working protocol in the Internet Layer in use today is IPv4 (which uses 32-bit addresses); with number 4 assigned as the formal protocol version number carried in every IP datagram. The successor to IPv4 is IPv6 (which uses 128-bit addresses).

IP Address

An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is the numerical label assigned to each device (e.g., computer, printer) participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.
An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) manages the IP address space allocations globally and delegates five regional Internet registries (RIRs) to allocate IP address blocks to local Internet registries (Internet service providers) and other entities.

Network Switches and Hubs

A network switch is a small hardware device that joins multiple computers together within one local area network (LAN) and operate at layer two (Data Link Layer) of the OSI model.
A switching hub is a computer networking device that connects network segments.
Network switches appear nearly identical to network hubs; a switch generally contains more intelligence than a hub. Unlike hubs, network switches are capable of inspecting data packets as they are received, determining the source and destination device of each packet, and forwarding them appropriately. By delivering messages only to the connected device intended, a network switch thereby conserves network bandwidth and offers generally better performance than a hub
The term commonly refers to a multi-port network bridge that processes and routes data at the data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI model. Switches that additionally process data at the network layer (Layer 3) and above are often referred to as Layer 3 switches or multilayer switches.

Network Routers

Routers are physical devices that join multiple wired, wireless networks or fibre together and operate at the network layer (3) of the OSI model. Located at gateways, the places where two or more networks connect, Routers use headers and forwarding tables to determine the best path for forwarding the packets; and use protocols such as ICMP to communicate with each other and configure the best route between any two hosts.
Very little filtering of data is done through routers.

An IP router such as a DSL or cable modem broadband router join the local area network (LAN) to the wide-area network (WAN) of the Internet. IP being the most common OSI network layer protocol.

By maintaining configuration information in a piece of storage called the routing table, wired, wireless networks or fibre routers also have the ability to filter traffic, either incoming or outgoing, based on the IP addresses of senders and receivers.

Gateway

A network gateway is an internetworking system capable of joining together two networks that use different base protocols. A network gateway can be implemented completely in software, completely in hardware, or as a combination of both.
As a network gateway, appears at the edge of a network, related feature like firewalls tend to be integrated with it.

Repeater

Network repeaters regenerate incoming electrical, wireless or optical signals. Repeaters attempt to preserve signal integrity and extend the distance over which data can safely travel.
Actual network devices that serve as repeaters usually have some other name. Active hubs, for example, are repeaters. Active hubs are sometimes also called "multiport repeaters," but more commonly they are just "hubs." Other types of "passive hubs" are not repeaters. In Wi-Fi, access points function as repeaters only when operating in "repeater mode.

Intranet

Intranets utilize standard network hardware and software technologies to provide private computer networks within organizations. An intranet uses network technologies as a tool to facilitate communication between people or work groups to improve the data sharing capability and overall knowledge base of an organization's employees. An organization's intranet typically includes Internet access and is firewalled so that its computers cannot be reached directly from the outside.

Extranet

An extranet is a computer network that allows controlled access from the outside for specific business or educational purposes. Extranets are extensions to, or segments of, private intranet networks that have been built in many corporations for information sharing and ecommerce.

Firwall

Network firewalls protect a computer network from unauthorized access and maybe hardware devices, software programs, or a combination of the two. Network firewalls guard an internal computer network (home, school, business intranet) against malicious access from the outside. Network firewalls can also be configured to limit access to the outside from internal users.

VPN

A VPN utilizes public telecommunications networks to conduct private data communications. Most VPN implementations use the Internet as the public infrastructure and a variety of specialized protocols to support private communications through the Internet

Historically

In May 1974, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) published a paper entitled "A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection." And described an internetworking protocol for sharing resources using packet-switching among the nodes; authors, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. The "Transmission Control Program" (TCP) formed the central control component of this model that incorporated both connection-oriented links and datagram services between hosts. The Transmission Control Program was later divided to consist the Transmission Control Protocol at the connection-oriented layer and the Internet Protocol at the internetworking (datagram) layer. The model known informally as TCP/IP and formally referenced as the Internet Protocol Suite.

Disclaimer

Although we have striven to ensure the accuracy of the above definitions, no guarantee is given or implied to validate their accuracy or changes that may be agreed or errors that may have occured in their presentation above.

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