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Network Engineering Vocabulary

Creators

This guide is created by Joelle Maslak.

How This Guide Works

Each word/acronym will be presented with the pronunciation, if not obvious, in parenthesis. It will be followed by some contextual/definitional information.

Note that other domains may be relevant to network engineering discussions. You can get a list of completed domains under the Main Page of this repository.

Sub-domains

There are multiple sub-domains of networking, and it may be beneficial to ask the person or event you are captioning for what domains are relevant or which terms from the following lists may come up.

General Networking

  • Ethernet: a type of network connection
  • LAN (rhymes with Dan): Local Area Network
  • Route/router/routing: Means of or devices that move packets around the network
  • Megabits/Gigabits/Terabits: Network engineers almost always talk about bits, not bytes, unlike most IT professionals.
  • Megs/Gigs: Short for megabits/gigabits (usually in networking, it's bits, not bytes)
  • WAN (rhymes with Dan): Wide Area Network

Network Processes / Operations

  • BOM (bahm): Bill of Materials
  • Jira (jeer-ah): A service ticket system
  • MOP (Said like "mop"): Method of procedure
  • NMS (spelled): Network Management System
  • NOC (spelled or like knock): Network Operations Center
  • OOB (spelled or rhymes with cube): Out of band
  • POC (spelled): Proof of concept or point of contact
  • POP (pop): Point of Presence
  • SR (spelled): Service Request
  • TAC (spelled): Technical Assistance Center / support center

IP (Internet Protocol) Networking

  • Anycast: Requests are answered by any available server
  • AS (spelled): Autonomous System, may be followed by a number (ex: AS2906)
  • ASN (spelled): Autonomous System Number
  • BGP (spelled): Border Gateway Protocol, a routing protocol
  • Bilat (short for bilateral, pronounced similarl): A bilateral connection
  • Cache: a device that stores short term copies
  • CDN (spelled): Content Distribution Network
  • DC (spelled): Either direct current or datacenter
  • DNS (spelled): Domain Name System
  • DSCP (spelled): A type of marking on packets
  • Frame: a chunk of data sent over a network
  • Gateway: Typically a router
  • IP (spelled): Internet Protocol
  • IPv4 (spelled): Internet Protocol version 4
  • IPv6 (spelled): Internet Protocol version 6
  • IS-IS (spelled or pronounced like the terrorists): A routing protocol
  • IX (spelled): Internet exchange
  • IXP (spelled): Internet Exchange Point
  • MPLS (spelled): Multiprotocol label switching
  • Multicast: one to many
  • NNI (spelled): Network-to-Network Interconnect
  • Packet: a chunk of data sent over a network
  • PE (spelled): Provider Edge
  • Peer: A partner connected to our network
  • PNI (spelled): Private Network Interconnect
  • QoE (spelled): Quality of Experience
  • QoS (spelled): Quality of Service
  • RR (spelled): Route Reflector
  • Service class: Type of packet marking
  • Sflow (ess-flow): A type of network accounting record
  • SSH (spelled): Secure Shell
  • Spanning tree: A networking protocol
  • TC (spelled): Traffic Class
  • TE (spelled): Traffic Engineering
  • Transit: Means of reaching the rest of the internet
  • Unicast: One-to-one communication
  • VLAN (the V is prounced, LAN rhymes with Dan): A virtual LAN
  • VPN (spelled): Virtual Private Network
  • VRF (spelled): Virtual Routing and Forwarding

Network Device Programming

  • Dijkstra: inventor of key networking algorithm
  • GNMI (spelled): A network management protocol
  • Golang (go-lang): the Go programming language
  • JSON (jay-sahn): A data format
  • RFC (spelled): Request for comment
  • SNMP (spelled): Simple Network Management Protocol
  • YAML (spelled): Yet Another Markup Language

Physical Layer Networking

  • DWDM (spelled): dense wave division multiplexing
  • ER / ER4 (spelled): extended range optic
  • LC (spelled): Lucent Connector
  • LR / LR4 (spelled): long range optic
  • SC (spelled): a type of fiber connector
  • SR (spelled): short range optic
  • ST (spelled): a type of fiber connector
  • Transceiver: A device to convert signals usually from electrical to optical
  • WDM (spelled): Wave division multiplexing)
  • XR (spelled): extended range optic, different from ER
  • ZR (spelled): another type of optic

Security or Resiliency

  • ACL (spelled or as ack-el): Access Control List
  • DOS/DDOS (DOS pronounced to rhyme with boss; DDOS has the first D pronounced as a letter) Denial of service attack or distributed denial of service attack
  • Firewall
  • SRLG (spelled): Shared risk link group

Vendor Names

  • Arista (Ah-rist-ah): A network device vendor
  • Ciena (sea-en-uh): A fiber optic equipment vendor
  • Cisco: A network device vendor
  • Infinera (in-fin-err-ah): A fiber optic equipment vendor
  • Juniper: A network device vendor
  • Nokia: A network device vendor

Hardware

  • SERDES (sir-dee's): Serializer/Deserialiser, internal network device component to translate network traffic from bytes to a bitstream