[ee122] some useful acronyms to keep track of

Vern Paxson vern at icir.org
Fri Sep 14 01:05:08 PDT 2007


Last year, some students found it helpful to have a summary of the various
acronyms we run across in class.  I sent it out at that time around the
mid-term, which is why the list is divided up in acronyms that come up
prior to the mid-term and after.  There's also a list of acronyms we likely
won't cover in class, but you still will probably find useful to know in
your future network-related efforts.

For the most part, these are listed without definition, since the goal
is to flag them to be on your radar, as opposed to try to nail down their
meaning here.

	Hope this proves helpful,

		Vern



If no pronunciation is given, then it is each letter individually, e.g.,
TCP = "tee-sea-pea".

Acronyms we'll cover up to the MidTerm
--------------------------------------
ACK	pronounced as spelled
ARP	pronounced as spelled
ARQ
CDN
CIDR	pronounced "cider"
CNAME	pronounced "See-name"
CRC
CSMA
CSMA/CD
DF	This is the only IPv4 header bit that people commonly talked about.
DNS
FDM	not in fact widely used
FDMA	same, not in fact widely used
FTP
Gbps	pronounced "gigabit-per-second" or just "gigabit"
HTTP
IEEE	pronounced "eye-triple-ee"
IETF
IMAP	pronounced "eye-map"; sometimes is "IMAP4" for version 4 of the protocol
IP
IPv4
IPv6
ISP
LAN	pronounced as spelled; local area network
MAC	pronounced as spelled; often combined to "MAC address"
MIME	pronounced as spelled
MTU
MX
Mbps	pronounced "megabit-per-second" or just "megabit"
NAK	pronounced as spelled
NIC	pronounced as spelled
NRZ	not in fact widely used
NRZI	not in fact widely used
POP	pronounced as spelled; sometimes as "POP3" for version 3 of the protocol
PTR	pronounced either "P-T-R" or "Pointer"
RFC
RIR
RR
RTT
SACK	pronounced as spelled
SMTP
SONET	pronounced "sonnet"
TCP
TDM
TDMA
TLD
TOS	pronounced "toss"
TTL
UDP
URI
URL
WAN	pronounced as spelled; wide-area network, i.e., a network that spans a large geographic region
WWW	pronounced "dub-dub-dub" or sometimes "triple-dub"


Acronyms we'll cover after the Mid-Term
---------------------------------------
AIMD
BGP
CWND	pronounced "sea-wind"
DDoS	pronounced "dee-dos"
DHCP
DoS	pronounced as spelled
ECN
FIN	pronounced as spelled
ICMP
MSS
NAT	pronounced as spelled
OSPF
P2P	pronounced "pea-two-pea"
PMTU
QoS	pronounced either "Q-O-S" or "kwas"
RED	pronounced as spelled
RST	pronounced "reset"
SSTHRESH	pronounced "ess-ess-thresh"
SYN	pronounced "sin"
VOIP	pronounced "voyp"


Acronyms we probably won't cover, but you still should know
-----------------------------------------------------------
10BaseT	pronounced "ten-base-tee"; the Twisted Pair version ('T') of 10 Mbps Ethernet; also 100BaseT, 1000BaseT
10G	pronounced "ten-gee" or "ten-gig"; Ethernet that runs at 10 Gbps
802.3	pronounced "eight-oh-two-dot-three"; the IEEE standardization of Ethernet
802.11	pronounced "eight-oh-two-dot-eleven"; the IEEE family of wireless protocol standards such as "Wavelan"
ADDL	pronounced as spelled; the DNS "additional" RRs
ATM	Asynchronous Transfer Mode; a complex, high-speed link layer
AUTH	pronounced as spelled; the DNS "authority" RRs
FastEther	"fast-ether"; refers to 100 Mbps Ethernet
GigEther	"gig-ether"; 1 Gbps Ethernet
MAN	pronounced as spelled; metropolitan-area network
NANOG	pronounced "nan-nog"; North American Network Operators Group
PHY	pronounced "fie"; refers to the physical layer
WEP	pronounced as spelled; Wired Equivalent Privacy or Wireless Encryption Protocol
WiMAX	pronounced "why-max"; Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
WPA	Wi-Fi Protected Access


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