Network Terms
2 min readFeb 11, 2020
- Uniform Resource Locator (URL): a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it (from wikipedia).
- IP address: Unique in local network.
- Mac address: physical address
- Subnetwork: IP networks may be divided into subnetworks, the network prefix (high-order bits) and the rest field, host identifier, or interface identifier (IPv6). The subnet mask or CIDR notation determines how the IP address is divided into network and host parts
- Subnet mask and CIDR: The term subnet mask is only used within IPv4. For example an IPv4 address and its subnet mask are 192.0.2.1 and 255.255.255.0. The CIDR notation for the same IP address and subnet is 192.0.2.1/24, because the first 24 bits indicate the network.
- DHCP Server: A network server controlling a range of IP addresses automatically assigns IP addresses, default gateways, and other network parameters when client devices login.
- Domain Name Server (DNS):
- Gateway: A hardware device that acts as a “gate” between two networks. It may be a router, firewall, server, or other device that enables traffic to flow in and out of the network.
- Logical Port: Range from 0 to 65536 in the case of UDP ports and 0 to 65535 in the case of TCP ports. They are used to determine different services (web service, FTP service, SMTP service et.al) in TCP/IP or UDP. For example, TCP port 80 (or 443) is used when a data communication is handled by TCP/IP as client-server architecture.
Well-Known Ports (0-1023):e.g 80 for http, 23: Telnet
Registered Ports(1024-49151): assigned to user or registered ports
Dynamic/Private Ports(49152-65535)
