Abbreviations and Technical Terms
3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project
ACE Application Control Engine
ACK Shorthand for “acknowledgment,” often used in packet switching
ACM Association for Computing Machinery
ANS Advanced Network Services
ARPA Advanced Research Projects Agency
ARPANET A packet-switching digital communication system by Advanced Research Projects Agency
ASN Autonomous Systems Numbers
AUTOVON A secure telephone system designed by AT&T for the American military.
BBN Bolt, Beranek, and Newman Inc.
BBS Bulletin Board System
BE Best Efforts delivery guarantee
BEREC Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications
BGP Border Gateway Protocol
BIRD An internet protocol–routing project targeting Linux and UNIX-like systems. Its acronym stands for “BIRD Internet Routing Daemon,” a nod to GNU standing for “GNU Is Not UNIX.”
BSD Berkeley Software Distribution, an operating system derived from UNIX
CAIDA Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis
CAIP The Canadian Association of Internet Providers
CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
CDN Content Distribution Networks
CGO Canadian Gamers Organization
CIDR Classless Inter-Domain Routing, a standard that includes a notation method for IP addresses
CMTS Cable Modem Termination System
CRTC Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission
CSEC Communications Security Establishment of Canada
CTSS Compatible Time-Sharing System, one of the first time-sharing operating systems
CYCLADES French packet-switching project developed in the 1970s
DAEMON A computer program running in the background of a computer system as an automated process rather than being under the direct command of a user
DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, what Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) is now called
DASH Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP
DDoS Distributed Denial of Service attack
DHT Distributed Hash Tables
DNS Domain Name System
DOCSIS Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (enable broadband over coaxial cable)
DPI Deep Packet Inspection
DRM Digital Rights Management
DSLAM Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer
E2E End-to-End principle
eBGP External Border Gateway Protocol
EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation
FCC Federal Communications Commission
FIDONET A worldwide communication network between electronic Bulletin Board Systems
FTP File Transfer Protocol
GATEWAY Generic term to describe hardware that interconnects different systems. The core internet requires gateways to interconnect autonomous systems.
HCI Human–Computer Interaction
HOST A device connected to the internet
HSIS High-Speed Internet Service
HSPA High-Speed Packet Access
HTML HyperText Markup Language
HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol
Hub Obsolete piece of network infrastructure that interconnected computers and forwarded packets. Hubs forwarded packets to all ports, unlike their successor, switches.
I2P The Invisible Internet Project
IANA Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
iBGP Internal Border Gateway Protocol
ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
IETF Internet Engineering Task Force
IMP Interface Message Processor
IoT Internet of Things
IP Internet Protocol address
IPRED Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive
IPSec Internet Protocol Security
IPTO Information Processing Techniques Office, part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency
IRC Internet Relay Chat
IRE Institute of Radio Engineers, predecessor to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
ISP Internet Service Provider
ITMP Internet Traffic Management Practices, a term used by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission
ITU International Telecommunications Union
LTE Long-Term Evolution
MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M-Lab Measurement Lab, an open platform for internet measurement
Modem Modulator-Demodulator, device used to send digital signals over analog lines
MP3 MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, a coding format for digital audio
MPAA Motion Picture Association of America
MPLS Multi-Protocol Label Switching
NAC Network Analysis Corporation
NCC Network Control Center at BBN
NCP Network Control Program at University of California, Los Angeles
NMC Network Measurement Center
NNTP Network News Transfer Protocol
NPL National Physical Laboratory
NSA U.S. National Security Agency
NSFNET National Science Foundation Network
OLIVER On-Line Interactive Vicarious Expediter and Responder
OSPF Open Shortest Path First routing protocol
P2P Peer-to-Peer
PBE Priority Best Efforts delivery guarantee
PCC Policy and Charging Control architecture
PPPoE Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet
PPTP Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol
PTS Policy Traffic Switch
QoS Quality of Service
RAND The Research ANd Development corporation
RFC Request for Comments
RFNM Request for Next Message
RFQ Request for Quotations
Router Generic term to refer to hardware capable of maintaining routing tables and forwarding packets between networks
RSVP Resource reSerVation Protocol
SABRE Semi-Automated Business Research Environment
SAGE Semi-Automatic Ground Environment
SCE Service Control Engine
SDN Software-Defined Networking
SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol
SRT System Response Time
Switch Generic term to refer to hardware that forwards packets between devices in a local area network. Switches are intelligent enough to send packets only to the appropriate port for the packet to reach its destination, unlike its predecessor hubs.
TCP Transmission Control Protocol
TCP/IP The Internet Protocol Suite (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol)
TOR The Onion Router
TPB The Pirate Bay
UDP User Datagram Protocol
VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol
VPN Virtual Private Network
WAAS Wide Area Application Services
WELL Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link
WoW World of Warcraft