FOSS Network Infrastructure and Security/Glossary

Client A client is a computer on the network which uses the server to get resources which may be e-mails, documents, or other forms of data.
Deamon In UNIX and GNU/Linux, daemons are server software that constantly run on top of the operating system.
Host Any device connected to the Internet or a TCP/IP network is referred to as the host.
IEFT The Internet Engineering Task Force is the Internet standards making organization. IETF publishes the RFC series documents as Internet standards. See http://www.ietf.org.
Internet The Internet is commonly referred to as the ‘networks of networks’. In technical terms, the Internet is the global network of computers that are able to communicate in TCP/IP with each other.
Intranet A private network, which operates on the same principles as the Internet, is called Intranet. Intranets also use the TCP/IP protocol.
Localhost Computers with TCP/IP installed refer to their loopback interface as the local host. This is defined by default in the DNS software.
Loopback Loopback is a virtual interface defined in all TCP/IP computers. This virtual interface is assigned the IP address 127.0.0.1 and is required for TCP/IP to work properly.
PoP Point of Presence – an Internet service provider’s branch office. This should not be confused with POP3, which is an e-mail protocol and stands for Post Office Protocol.
Port The points of contacts with any TCP/IP host. TCP/IP computers with IP addresses have ports ranging from 1 to 65336, which act as points of contact for different services running on that computer. For example, the SMTP protocol uses port 25, HTTP uses port 80, and so on.
RFC Request for Comments is the series of documentation for Internet standards documents.
Server A server is a powerful computer that serves resources to other computers on the network. The server can also be a big storage space as well as a database. The key here is the special software that enables the hardware to provide services.
SSL Secure Sockets Layer is a secure communications layer that makes it possible to use the Web for e-commerce transactions. It makes sure that all communications between a client and server is encrypted.
VLAN A virtual LAN is a feature provided by many Ethernet switches, to allow the creation of multiple logical networks over the same physical connections. A single switch with three VLANs behaves the same way as three different physical switches.
VPN Virtual Private Networks are encrypted private networks which are running on top of the public network like the Internet.