A-Z Glossary

2LD
Second Level Domain, for example, www.yourbusinessname.com.au, the letters after the name and before the .au.

6to4
A 6to4 gateway adds its IPv4 address to this 2002::/16, creating a unique /48 prefix. As the IPv4 address of the gateway router is used to compose the IPv6 prefix, it is possible to reverse the process and identify the IPv4 address, which can then be looked up in the relevant RIR’s whois database.

AC
Advisory Council. The ARIN Advisory Council serves in an advisory capacity to the Board of Trustees on Internet number resource policy and related matters.

ADSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. 

Adjacency attestation (AAO)
An AAO is a digitally signed object that verifies that an AS has made an attestation that it has an inter-domain adjacency with one or more other ASes.

Advertisements
See Routing advertisement.

AFA
APNIC Foundation Australia. See APNIC Foundation.

AFRINIC
African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) is the Regional Internet Registry for the African region.

AGM
Annual General Meeting.

Allocation
Address space allocated by APNIC or NIRs to LIRs for the purpose of subsequent distribution by LIRs to their customers.

AMM
Annual Member Meeting.

APAN
Asia Pacific Advanced Network Consortium is the international partnership of the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) across the region. It spans over half of the world’s population, and its members are fundamental in the provision of high-speed network connectivity domestically and internationally.

APEC
The Asia Pacific Economic Corporation is a regional economic forum established in 1989 to leverage the growing interdependence of the Asia Pacific. APEC’s 21 members aim to create greater prosperity for the people of the region by promoting balanced, inclusive, sustainable, innovative and secure growth and by accelerating regional economic integration.

APECTEL
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Telecommunications and Information Working Group aims to advance the development of information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and services as well as to promote cooperation, information sharing and the development of effective ICT policies and regulations in the Asia Pacific region. 

APIDT
The Asia Pacific Internet Development Trust is a fund created to benefit Internet development in the region.

APNIC
APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) is the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific region.

APNIC Foundation
The APNIC Foundation actively seeks funding to support APNIC in building human and community capacity for Internet development in the Asia Pacific region.

APNIC Whois Database
The APNIC Whois Database is an official record that contains information regarding organizations that hold IP addresses and AS numbers in the Asia Pacific region.

Application Service Provider
Entity that provides specific application(s) direct to the end user.

APNG
The Asia Pacific Next Generation is an arena in which future leaders of the digital society in the Asia Pacific region gather to build a human network and learn from each other. 

APNOG
The Asia Pacific Network Operators Group is the non-profit entity which has assumed responsibility for the delivery of the annual APRICOT summit from the Asia Pacific Internet Association (APIA) as from the 1st July 2019.

APJII/IDNIC
Asosiasi Penyelenggara Jasa Internet Indonesia (Indonesian ISP Association) and Indonesia Network Information Centre is the NIR for Indonesia.

APrIGF
The Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum serves as a platform for discussion, exchange and collaboration to advance Internet governance development in the Asia Pacific region.

APrIGF MSG
The APrIGF Multistakeholder Steering Group helps organize the APrIGF events and promotes and encourages dialogue among all stakeholders involved with Internet governance related issues in the Asia Pacific region.

APT
The Asia Pacific Telecommunity is an intergovernmental organization that operates in conjunction with telecom service providers, manufacturers of communications equipment, and research and development organizations active in the field of communication, information and innovation technologies.

APT — Advanced persistent threat
Advanced persistent threat is a stealthy threat actor, typically a nation state or state-sponsored group, which gains unauthorized access to a computer network and remains undetected for an extended period.

APTLD
The Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association is an organization for ccTLD (country-code Top Level Domain) registries in the Asia Pacific region.

ARIN
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is the Regional Internet Registry for the North American region.

arpa (or ‘.arpa’)
The Address and Routing Parameters Area top level domain, used for network infrastructure.

ARPA/ARPANET
The Advanced Research Project Agency Network, now known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.

ASEAN
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is an economic union comprising 10 member states in Southeast Asia, which promotes intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economicpoliticalsecuritymilitaryeducational, and sociocultural integration between its members and other economies in Asia.

Assignment
Address space assigned for specific use within the Internet infrastructure of a network. Assignments can be made by LIRs to their customer’s network infrastructure or to the LIR’s own infrastructure.

Assignment of a number
The process for providing an international numbering resource to an eligible applicant (when used in the formal sense as defined in Section 5.4 of ITU-T Rec. E.190 (05/97)).

ASO
The Address Supporting Organization is one of ICANN’s three supporting organizations that reviews and develops recommendations on IP address policy and advises the ICANN Board on policy issues relating to the operation, assignment, and management of IP addresses.

ASO AC
The Address Supporting Organization Address Council consists of the 15 members of the NRO Number Council (NRO NC). The NRO NC is an elected body of 15 volunteers and is called for in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Bylaws. See NRO NC below.

Assignment window
Refers to the amount of IP address space that you can assign or sub-allocate to your customers without the need to send in a second opinion request form for APNIC’s approval.

AUNIC
Australian Network Information Centre.

AusNOG
Australian Network Operators Group. AusNOG is a community of network operators who work in ISPs, content providers, or other areas of the online industry in Australia. See the NOGs page for more information about NOGs.

Autonomous System (AS)
An AS is a group of IP networks run by one or more network operators with a single clearly defined routing policy.

Autonomous System Number (ASN or AS number)
ASNs are globally unique identifiers for Autonomous Systems (ASes) and are used as identifiers to allow the ASes to exchange dynamic routing information.

BCP
Best Common Practice; Best Current Practice (IETF); Business Continuity Plan.

bdNOG
Bangladesh Network Operators Group.

Benchmarking
These IPv6 addresses are reserved for use in documentation. They should not be used as source or destination addresses.

BGP
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the routing protocol used to exchange routing information across the Internet. BGP allows ISPs to connect to each other and for end users to connect to more than one ISP. BGP is the only protocol that is designed to deal with a network of the Internet’s size, and deal well with having multiple connections to unrelated routing domains.

BIND
Berkeley Internet Name Daemon is a software server application that provides name resolution services.

Blackholing
Where false routing advertisements redirect traffic away from its intended destination and instead are directed to a sink point. This results in an effective Denial of Service (DoS), where the target service is taken offline. A side effect may be a rearrangement of traffic flows that could overload some network links.

BoF
Birds of a Feather meetings are informal meetings that are convened for a variety of purposes such as exchanging information and discussing new ideas or particular issues.

btNOG
Bhutan Network Operators Group.

Cache
The Recursive Resolver’s cache is its memory where the answers for recent queries are stored. If the answer to a query is on the Recursive Resolver’s cache, the Recursive Resolver will not query any other server, but will give out the stored answer.

CC
E.164 Country Code (as specified in ITU-T Recommendation E.164).

ccTLD
Country Code Top Level Domain.

CA
A Certificate Authority  is an entity that issues digital certificates

CANTO
Caribbean Association of National Telecommunications Organizations.

CCWG
The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability is a group formed by ICANN as part of ICANN’s Enhancing Accountability Process. It was created to examine how ICANN’s accountability mechanisms should be strengthened as part of the IANA Stewardship Transition Process. Also referred to as CCWG-Accountability.

Certificate extensions
To make the original X.509 certificate standard suitable for Resource Certification it needed some minor modifications, or extensions, to provide a place to record the Internet number resources held by the private key holder. See X.509.

CERTs
Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) or Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) are expert groups that respond to cybersecurity incidents, such as malware, DDoS, and ransomware attacks. These groups play a vital role in the maintenance of the networks that comprise the Internet.

CIDR
Classless Inter Domain Routing is a method of categorizing IP addresses for the purpose of allocating IP addresses to users and for efficiently routing IP packets on the Internet.

Client/Server
A method of splitting software functions, for example, a PC-based email client and a network-based email server.

CNNIC
The China Internet Network Information Centre is the NIR for China.

Country
A specific country, a group of countries in an integrated numbering plan or a specific geographical area (when used in a formal sense of an ITU-T Rec. E.164 Country Code).

CPE
Customer Premises Equipment is any telecommunications equipment sold or leased by the carrier to the customer that is installed at the customer’s location. It is typically installed to originate, route, or terminate telecommunication between the customer premises and the carrier or telco’s location from which the service is leased.

CPS
Certification Practice Statement is a document from a certificate authority or a member of a web of trust which describes their practice for issuing and managing public key certificates.

CRISP Team
The Consolidated RIR IANA Stewardship Proposal Team (CRISP) is a group representing the Internet numbering community that produced a proposal for the IANA Stewardship Transition Process.

Critical Internet infrastructure
A collective terms for all hardware and software systems that constitute essential components in the operation of the Internet.

CSIRT
See CERTs above.

CWG
The Cross Community Working Group to Develop an IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal on Naming Related Functions (CWG) is a group representing the domain name community to produce a proposal for the IANA Stewardship Transition Process.

DASH
The Dashboard for Autonomous System Health is an APNIC product to help you rapidly track suspicious traffic seen coming from your network.

DDoS
Distributed denial-of-service is a DoS attack launched from multiple computers.

Digital certificate
A digital certificate is an electronic certificate used to prove your identity or your right to access information or services online. A digital certificate is required in order to access secured services of APNIC. The digital certificates used by APNIC conform to Standard X.509.

Digital signature
A digital signature is an electronic signature that authenticates the identity of a message sender, or document signer and possibly to ensure that the original content of the message or document has arrived unchanged.

DNS
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical and decentralized naming system for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities.

DNSSEC
Domain Name Security Extensions are extensions to the DNS that provide authentication of the origin of DNS data, integrity of data and authentication of denial of existence.

Domain
A set of host names consisting of a single domain name and all the domain names below it.

Domain name
As part of the Domain Name System, domain names identify IP resources, such as an Internet website.

DoS
Denial-of-service is a type of Internet attack where an attacker attempts to prevent legitimate users from accessing information or services generally by flooding the service provider with bogus requests or traffic.

E.164
The international public telecommunication numbering plan.

E.164 number (for geographical areas)
An E.164 number typically consisting of three fields, CC (country code), NDC (national destination code), and SN (subscriber number).

E.190
Principles and responsibilities for the management, assignment and reclamation of E Series international numbering resources.

E164 Number
A number from ITU-T Rec E.164 numbering plan that uniquely indicates a public network termination point.

e164.arpa
In the .arpa domain, the subdomain of ENUM names for E.164 numbers.

EC
The APNIC Executive Council serves as the governing board of APNIC, as defined in the APNIC By-laws. Each member of the EC serves a two-year term of office but is eligible for re-election at the end of each term.

End site
An end site is defined as an end user (subscriber) who has a business relationship with a service provider that involves that service provider: (i) Assigning address space to the end user; (ii) Providing transit service for the end user to other sites; (iii) Carrying the end user’s traffic; and (iv) Advertising an aggregate prefix route that contains the end user’s assignment.

ENUM
Telephone Number Mapping – a protocol and an IETF WG.

ERX
Early Registration Transfer Project.

Ethernet
A system for connecting a number of computer systems to form a local area network.

EU
End user.

Exterior Gateway Protocol
The Exterior Gateway Protocol was a routing protocol used to connect different Autonomous Systems on the Internet from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s, when it was replaced by Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

FIRST
The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams brings together a variety of computer security incident response teams from government, commercial, and educational organizations. FIRST aims to foster cooperation and coordination in incident prevention, to stimulate rapid reaction to incidents, and to promote information sharing among members and the community at large.

GAC
Governmental Advisory Committee, one of ICANN’s stakeholder groups. The GAC provides ICANN with input from governments on issues of public policy.

GDD
ICANN’s Global Domains Division oversees generic domain operations, domain name industry engagement and web services.

Global Service
A service defined by the ITU-T, provisioned on the public switched network, … to enable the provision of that international service between two or more countries … (when used in the formal sense as defined in Section 4.14 of ITU-T Rec. E.164 (05/97)).

Global Unicast
Other than the exceptions documented in this table, the operators of networks using these addresses can be found using the whois servers of the RIRs listed in the registry.

GPRS
General Packet Radio Service is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network’s global system for mobile communications (GSM). 

gTLD
Generic Top Level Domain hosting/webhosting — a location (a server somewhere, connected to the Internet) that houses your Internet address.

H.323
Packet-based multimedia communication systems.

HD-Ratio
The HD-Ratio is a way of measuring the efficiency of address assignment [RFC 3194]. It is an adaption of the HD-Ratio originally defined in [RFC 1715] and is expressed as the number of allocated objects divided by the maximum number of allocatable objects. In the case of the ‘IPv6 Address Allocation and Assignment Policy document, the objects are IPv6 site addresses (/56s) assigned from an IPv6 prefix of a given size.

Historical resources
These are resources delegated to organizations by APNIC before the introduction of a membership structure. These resources have always been registered in the APNIC Whois Database but if the resource holder did not become an APNIC Member at any time after the introduction of the membership structure, the resources were not made subject to current APNIC policies.

HKNOG
Hong Kong Network Operators Group.

HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol is an application layer protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems.

IAB
The Internet Architecture Board provides long-range technical direction for Internet development, ensuring the Internet continues to grow and evolve as a platform for global communication and innovation.

IANA
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, ASN allocation, root zone management in the DNS, media types, and other IP-related symbols and Internet numbers.

IANAPlan WG
The IANAPlan Working Group is a group representing the Internet protocols and parameters community that produced a proposal for the IANA Stewardship Transition Process.

IBGP
The Interior border Gateway Protocol is used inside an organization’s network and is limited to the border router.

ICANN
The Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers is a multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the Internet’s names and numerical spaces, ensuring the network’s stable and secure operation.

ICANN GAC
ICANN Government Advisory Committee is an advisory committee to the ICANN Board. The GAC’s key role is to provide advice to ICANN on issues of public policy, and especially where there may be an interaction between ICANN’s activities or policies and national laws or international agreements.

ICG
The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group was formed by ICANN to oversee the IANA Stewardship Transition Process. This group is responsible for collecting and evaluating proposals on the IANA Stewardship Transition Process from the Domain Names Community (CWG), Number Resources Community (CRISP Team), and the Protocol and Parameters Community (IANAPlan WG).

ICMP
The Internet Control Message Protocol is a supporting protocol in the Internet protocol suite. It is used by network devices, including routers, to send error messages and operational information indicating success or failure when communicating with another IP address, for example, when an error is indicated when a requested service is not available or that a host or router could not be reached.

IESG
The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) is part of ISOC and is responsible for technical management of IETF activities and the Internet standards process.

IETF
The Internet Engineering Task Force is an open standards organization, which develops and promotes voluntary Internet standards, in particular, the standards that comprise the Internet protocol suite.

IGF
The Internet Governance Forum is an annual meeting where delegates discuss public policy issues relating to the Internet.

IGF MAG
The IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group advises the ITU Secretary-General on the program and schedule of the IGF meetings. The MAG comprises 55 Members from governments, the private sector and civil society, including representatives from the academic and technical communities.

Impersonation
Where false routing advertisements redirect traffic away from the intended destination and instead directs traffic to a site that masquerades as the destination service. This form of masquerading is used to gather otherwise confidential information from users of the original service. See Phishing.

in-addr.arpa
In the .arpa domain, the subdomain for IP addresses (as names) for host names.

INNOG
Indian Network Operators Group.

Injection
Refers to the method of inserting routing information into the routing table. In context, it can also imply the injection of false routing information.

Internet Directory
See REx—The Resource Explorer.

Inspection and alteration
Where false routing advertisements cause traffic to an intended destination to be forwarded to a compromised network segment. Here the traffic may be inspected, or even altered, before being passed onward to the actual destination.

Internet number resources
APNIC refers to IPv4 and IPv6 address blocks and ASNs as Internet number resources.

Internet Exchange Point (IX or IXP)
An Internet Exchange Point is a layer 1 and layer 2 network structure that interconnects three or more ASes for the purpose of Internet traffic interchange.

Internet Registry
An Internet Registry (IR) is an organization that is responsible for distributing IP address space to its members or customers and for registering those distributions. IRs include: (i) APNIC and other Regional Internet Registries (RIRs); (ii) National Internet Registries (NIRs); and (iii) Local Internet Registries (LIRs).

IRINN
Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers.

IRR
The Internet Routing Registry is a part of the APNIC Whois Database that is used to publish information about the routing of Internet number resources. This information is then available worldwide to be used for routing validation, testing, and filtering.

IoT
The Internet of Things is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

IP
The Internet Protocol is a protocol, or set of rules, for routing and addressing packets of data so that they can travel across networks and arrive at the correct destination.

IPv4 address
An IPv4 address is a binary number consisting of 32 bits that are organized into four bytes. The four bytes are usually portrayed using a dotted decimal notation such as 1.2.3.4. Each decimal number is the equivalent of a byte; the dots used between the decimals are used to separate the bytes. For example, 205.150.58.7.

IPv4-Mapped
These addresses are used to embed IPv4 addresses in an IPv6 address. One use for this is in a dual-stack transition scenario where IPv4 addresses can be mapped into an IPv6 address.

IPv6
The next generation Internet layer protocol for the Internet. It has a much larger address space than IPv4 with a 128-bit address. This supports 2128 addresses. They are conventionally expressed using hexadecimal strings, for example, 2001:0db8:582:ae33::29.

IRT
Incident Response Teams or Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) specifically respond to computer security incident reports and activity.

ISIF Asia
The Information Society Innovation Fund is a grants program dedicated to empowering organizations that research, design and implement technical solutions that support Internet development and facilitate human and economic development in the Asia Pacific region.

ISOC
The Internet Society is a global nonprofit organization empowering people to keep the Internet a force for good: open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy.

ISP
An Internet Service Provider is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet.

ISPAB
Internet Services Providers Association of Bangladesh.

ISPAI
Internet Services Providers Association of India.

ITAC
The Internet Technical Advisory Committee contributes constructively to the OECD’s development of Internet-related policies.

ITHI
The Identifier Technology Health Indicator project was implemented by ICANN to monitor the health of the registered identifiers ecosystem, through a set of Identifier Technology Health Indicators, or ITHI Metrics.

ITU
The International Telecommunication Union is the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies — ICTs.

ITU-T
The Telecommunications standardization sector of the ITU. It coordinates standards for telecommunications and Information Communication Technology such as X.509 for cybersecurity, Y.3172 for machine learning, and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC for video compression, between its Member States, Private Sector Members, and Academia Members.

IXP
Internet Exchange Points are common grounds of IP networking, allowing participant Internet service providers to exchange data destined for their respective networks. IXPs are generally located at places with preexisting connections to multiple distinct networks.

JPNIC
Japan Network Information Center.

JANOG
Japan Network Operators Group.

KISA/KRNIC
Korean Internet & Security Agency / Korea Network Information Centre is the NIR for the South Korea.

KHNOG
Cambodia Network Operators Group.

LACNIC
Latin American & Caribbean Network Information Centre (LACNIC) is the Regional Internet Registry for Latin America and some Caribbean Islands.

LAN
A Local Area Network is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building.

Link-Local addresses
These addresses are used on a single link or a non-routed common access network, such as an Ethernet LAN. They do not need to be unique outside of that link. Link-local addresses may appear as the source or destination of an IPv6 address.

LKNOG
Sri Lanka Network Operators Group.

Local Internet Registry (LIR)
A LIR is an Internet Registry (IR) that primarily assigns address space to the users of the network services that it provides. LIRs are generally ISPs, whose customers are primarily end users and possibly other ISPs.

LOA
Letter of authority or Legitimacy of address check.

Loopback
This address is used when a host talks to itself over IPv6. This often happens when one program sends data to another.

LSN
Large Scale NAT. See NAT.

MANRS
The Mutual Agreed Norms for Routing Security is a global initiative, supported by the Internet Society, that provides crucial fixes to reduce the most common routing threats.

MMNOG
Myanmar Network Operators Group.

mnNOG
Mongolian Network Operators Group.

MoU
Memorandum of Understanding.

MSP
A Managed Service Provider delivers services, such as network, application, infrastructure and security, via ongoing and regular support and active administration on customers’ premises, in their MSP’s data centre (hosting), or in a third-party data centre.

MTU
The Maximum Transmission Unit is the size of the largest protocol data unit (PDU) that can be communicated in a single network layer transaction

Multicast
These addresses are used to identify multicast groups. They should only be used as destination addresses, never as source addresses.

Multihomed
Describes a computer host that has multiple IP addresses to connected networks. A multihomed host is physically connected to multiple data links that can be on the same or different networks.

MyNOG
Malaysia Network Operators Group.

Name server
A DNS component that stores information about one zone (or more) of the DNS name space.

Name space
The structure of the DNS database.

Name vs address vs route
A name identifies an endpoint, an address tells where it is, and a route tells how to get there.

NANOG
North American Network Operators Group.

NAPTR
Number Authority Pointer (as used within IETF RFC 2916 to identify possible URLs and numbers that can be returned).

NAT
Network Address Translation (NAT) is the process of modifying a network address while in transit for the purpose of remapping a given address space into another.

NAT-PT
Network Address Translation – Protocol Translation. The NAT-PT router translates the source IPv4 address of the packet into an IPv6 address according to the static or dynamic mapping on the IPv4 side.

National Internet Registry (NIR)
A NIR primarily allocates address space to its members or constituents that are generally LIRs organized at a national level. NIRs mostly exist in the Asia Pacific region.

NetOX
NetOX (Network Operators toolboX) is an APNIC product that provides a set of tools for network operators to get information about their, and other networks, to solve routing issues and make better informed decisions like deciding which other networks to connect to.

Network
An international network providing public correspondence services (when used in the formal sense as defined in Section 4.17 of ITU-T Rec. E.164 (05/97)).

NFV
Network function virtualization is a network architecture concept that uses the technologies of IT virtualization to virtualize entire classes of network node function into building blocks that may connect, or chain together, to create communication services.

Nibble boundary
A bit is the smallest unit of data on a binary computer. A nibble is a collection of bits on a four-bit boundary (half-byte), that is, it takes four bits to represent a single binary code decimal (BCD) or hexadecimal digit (0-9, A, B, C, D, E, F in ASCII). When IPv6 addresses are represented in the DNS, the entire binary sequence is listed as hexidecimal characters. When listed in reverse, each hexadecimal character becomes a ‘nibble boundary’.

NIC
Network Information Centre.

NIR
National Internet Registry. NIRs perform Internet number delegations and registrations in line with APNIC policies. 

NOG
Network Operator Groups are informal forums that bring together network operators, network engineers and other technical professionals to discuss matters relating to routing, network security, peering and interconnection, and other operational Internet issues. While the forums are generally structured around sharing relevant technical information, they also provide training and other skills development opportunities to the region’s operators.

Non-portable
Non-portable addresses must be returned if the network changes upstream provider.

NP
Number portability.

npNOG
Nepal Network Operators Group.

NREN
National research and education networks are specialized ISPs dedicated to support the needs of research and education communities within an economy.

NRO
The Number Resource Organization is the coordinating body of the RIRs.

NRO NC
The NRO Number Council is an elected body of 15 volunteers. It also serves as the ASO AC as outlined in the ICANN ASO MoU. See ASO AC above.

NTIA
The National Telecommunications Information Administration is an agency of the US government’s Department of Commerce, which provides advice on telecommunications and policy issues.

NZNOG
New Zealand Network Operators Group.

OECD
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is an intergovernmental economic organization with 38 member economies, founded to stimulate economic progress and world trade. 

Orchid
These IPv6 addresses are used for a fixed-term experiment. They should only be visible on an end-to-end basis and routers should not see packets using them as source or destination addresses.

OSPF
Open Shortest Path First is a routing protocol for Internet Protocol networks. It uses a link state routing algorithm and falls into the group of interior gateway protocols, operating within a single Autonomous System.

Ownership vs use of a number
Numbering resources … are not to be considered ‘owned’ by the assignee. Assignment of the numbering resource … confers use of the resources … (in the formal sense of Principle 5 in ITU-T Rec. E.190.).

PA
Provider aggregatable address space is a block of IP addresses assigned by an RIR to an ISP that can be aggregated into a single route advertisement for improved Internet routing efficiency

PacNOG
Pacific Network Operators Group.

PCTA
Philippine Cable Television Association.

PDP
APNIC Policy Development Process — APNIC’s resource management policies are developed by the Internet community through an open, bottom-up, multistakeholder process. The formal process used to develop these policies was itself decided by, and is controlled by, the community.

Phishing
Any of several methods designed to illegally acquire sensitive or private information such as bank details, login information or personal details by fraudulently masquerading as a trustworthy entity.

PGP
Pretty Good Privacy is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, emails, files, directories, and whole disk partitions and to increase the security of email communications.

phNOG
Philippine Network Operators Group.

PI
Provider independent address space is a block of IP addresses assigned by an RIR directly to an end-user organization.

PKI
Public Key Infrastructure is a combination of technologies that allow the verification and secure exchange of data through the use of encryption, digitally signed certificates, and public and private keys.

PNGNOG
Papua New Guinea Network Operators Group.

POP
A Point of Presence is an artificial demarcation point or network interface point between communicating entities. A common example is an ISP POP, the local access point that allows users to connect to the Internet with their ISP.

Portable
Portable addresses can be retained by the network if the network changes upstream provider.

Portable allocation
APNIC makes portable allocations to organizations. That is, it distributes address space to IRs for the purpose of subsequent distribution by them.

PPP
Point-to-Point Protocol is a data link layer communication protocol between two routers directly without any host or any other networking in between. It can provide connection authentication, transmission encryption, and data compression.

PSTN
The Public Switched Telephone Network is the aggregate of the world’s circuit-switched telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local telephony operators, providing infrastructure and services for public telecommunication.

QoS
Quality of Service is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network.

Query/response
A protocol interaction between a client and a server.

RDAP
Registration Data Access Protocol is an alternative to whois for accessing Internet number resource registration data. It provides standardization of queries and responses; internationalization consideration to cater for languages other than English in data objects; and redirection capabilities to allow seamless referrals to other registries.

Registrar
Entity that provides direct services to domain name registrants by processing name registrations.

Registry
Entity that runs the DNS authoritative server for a specific domain.

Resolver
The client-based software that queries a DNS name server and receives the response.

REST
Representational state transfer is a software architectural style that was created to guide the design and development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of an Internet-scale distributed hypermedia system, such as the web, should behave.

Reverse DNS delegation or RDNS
Reverse DNS delegations allow applications to map to a domain name from an IP address. Reverse delegation is achieved by use of the pseudo-domain names in-addr.arpa (IPv4) and ip6.arpa (IPv6).

REx—The Resource Explorer
REx—The Resource Explorer is an APNIC product that provides data on how Internet number resources are distributed and used in the Asia Pacific region.  It was previously known as the Internet Directory.

RFC
Request For Comments — the name for an Internet standards-related specification.

RIP
The Routing Information Protocol is one of the oldest distance-vector routing protocols which employs the hop count as a routing metric. RIP prevents routing loops by implementing a limit on the number of hops allowed in a path from source to destination. The largest number of hops allowed for RIP is 15, which limits the size of networks that RIP can support.

RIPE NCC
Réseaux IP Européens Network Co-ordination Centre (RIPE NCC) is the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia.

RIRs
Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) are established and authorized by respective regional communities and recognized by IANA to serve and represent large geographical regions. The primary role of RIRs is to manage and distribute public Internet address space within their respective regions.

ROA
Resource Origin Authorization lists the prefixes that an ASN is authorized to announce. ROAs therefore state which AS is authorized to originate certain IP prefixes. Once validated, a ROA can be used to generate route filters.

ROV
Route Origin Validation is the application of RPKI to validate the origin AS. It’s the mechanism by which route advertisements can be authenticated as originating from an expected AS.

Root
The root level is the top level of the DNS, a hierarchical tree-like structure that maps domain names to IP addresses. Top level domains include .com, .org, and country-level names such as .ca nd .au.

Root server
A DNS server pointing to all top- level domains.

Routing advertisements
Each router announces or advertises a list of routes it can process, expressed as ranges of IP addresses for which it can provide routing service. Put simply, a router tells its peers, “If you have traffic intended for IP addresses in the range between 192.0.0.1 and 192.5.255.255 (for example), pass me those packets”.

RPKI
Resource Public Key Infrastructure (see also PKI) is a structure of digitally signed certificates that contain attestations regarding the right to use Internet number resources.

RPSL
The Routing Policy Specification Language is a language commonly used by ISPs to describe their routing policies.

RRs
A DNS Resource Record is a unit of information entry in DNS zone files; RRs are the basic building blocks of host-name and IP information and are used to resolve all DNS queries. Resource records come in a fairly wide variety of types in order to provide extended name-resolution services.

RQC
The APNIC Network Operators ToolbOX (NetOX) is a tool powered by RIPEstat , which includes a Resource Quality Check (RQC) section that allows you to check the quality of resources by providing whois, routing status and history, geolocation and blacklist entry information to users through a single web interface.

RWhois
Referral Whois is a directory services protocol which extends and enhances the whois concept in a hierarchical and scalable fashion. It focuses on the distribution of “network objects,”— the data representing Internet resources or people — and uses the inherently hierarchical nature of these network objects (for example, domain names, IP networks, and email addresses) to more accurately discover the requested information.

SANOG
South Asian Network Operators Group.

SDN
Software Defined Networking technology is an approach to network management that enables the network to be programmed using software applications. This helps operators manage the entire network consistently regardless of the underlying network technology.

Second opinion request
The process that is used to seek APNIC’s approval of assignments or sub-allocations that exceed your assignment window.

Service Registrar (for ENUM)
Entity that provides direct services to ENUM registrants and hosts NAPTR records that contain (service-specific) URIs.

SG2
ITU-T Study Group 2.

SGNOG
Singapore Network Operators Group.

SIG
Special Interest Groups are formed with a focus on a particular subject area. SIGs provide an open public forum to discuss topics of interest to APNIC and the Internet community in the Asia Pacific region. Face-to-face SIG meetings are held at APNIC conferences, which are held twice per year. SIGs are chaired by members of the community with relevant knowledge and expertise.

SIP
Session Initiation Protocol is a signalling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating real-time sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications.

SLA-ID
The Site Level Aggregation Identifier field is used by an individual organization to create its own local addressing hierarchy and to identify subnets. This is analogous to subnets in IPv4 except that each organization has a much greater number of subnets. The 16 bit SLA ID field support 65,535 individual subnets.

SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. As an Internet standard, SMTP was first defined in 1982 by RFC 821, and updated in 2008 by RFC 5321 to Extended SMTP additions, which is the protocol variety in widespread use today.

SSL
Secure Sockets Layer, is an encryption-based Internet security protocol. It was first developed by Netscape in 1995 for the purpose of ensuring privacy, authentication, and data integrity in Internet communications. SSL is the predecessor to the modern TLS encryption used today.

Sub-allocation
IP addresses are sub-allocated when they are distributed to an organization that will further assign them to their own end users.

Subnet mask
The routing prefix of a designated IP address.

TCP
The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite. It originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented the Internet Protocol. Therefore, the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP.

Teredo
Teredo is a transition technology that gives full IPv6 connectivity for IPv6-capable hosts that are on the IPv4 Internet but have no native connection to an IPv6 network.

ThaiNOG
Thailand Network Operators Group.

TLA ID
TheTop Level Aggregator is used to identify the Top Level Aggregator to which the address block belongs. TLAs delegate portions of their address block down to Next Level Aggregators (NLAs).

Time to Live (TTL)
One of the fields in the DNS records is the TTL (Time-To-Live) field. This is the number of milliseconds corresponding to the amount of time that the Recursive Resolver should keep the answer in its memory.

Top-Level Domain (TLD) Server
A Top-Level Domain (TLD) Server is known to the root servers. It is authoritative for TLDs (for example .com, .org, .net).

TTM
Test Traffic Measurement comprehensively measured key parameters regarding the connectivity of the host’s site to other parts of the Internet.

TWNIC
Taiwan Network Information Center.

TWNOG
Taiwan Network Operators Group.

UDP port
The Recursive Resolver is expecting the answer packet on the same UDP port from where the query was sent.

Unique Local Addresses (ULAs)
These addresses are reserved for local use in home and enterprise environments and are not public address space. These addresses might not be unique and there is no formal address registration. Packets with these addresses in the source or destination fields are not intended to be routed on the public Internet but are intended to be routed within the enterprise or organization.

URI
Uniform Resource Identifier — a URL is a URI.

URL
Uniform Resource Locator is a specific type of URI.

USG
United States government.

VLSM
A Variable Length Subnet Mask (VLSM) is a method of allocating IP addresses and other Internet number resources to subnets, according to their individual needs. This serves as an alternative to using a general, network-wide rule.

VNNIC
Vietnam Network Information Center.

VNIX-NOG
Vietnam Network Operators Group.

VoIP
Voice over IP, also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks, such as the Internet.

W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium is an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web.

WAN
A Wide Area Network is a telecommunications network that extends over a large geographic area for the primary purpose of computer networking. WANs are often established with leased telecommunication circuits.

WCIT
The ITU convened the World Conference on International Telecommunications in 2012 to review the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), which serve as the binding global treaty designed to facilitate international interconnection and interoperability of information and communication services, as well as ensuring their efficiency and widespread public usefulness and availability.​​​​​​​​​​

WG
Working Group.

WGIG
The Working Group on Internet Governance was a United Nations multistakeholder Working group initiated after the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) first phase Summit in Geneva failed to agree on the future of Internet governance. The first phase of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) agreed to continue the dialogue on Internet Governance in the Declaration of Principles and Action Plan adopted on 12 December 2003, to prepare for a decision at the second phase of the WSIS in Tunis during November 2005. In this regard, the first phase of the Summit requested the United Nations Secretary-General to establish a Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG).

WP1/2
Working Party 1 of SG 2.

WTPF
The World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum is a high-level international event to exchange views on the key policy issues arising from today’s fast changing ICT environment.

WTSA
The World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly is held every four years and defines the next period of study for ITU-T.

X.509 certificate
An X. 509 certificate is a digital certificate that uses the widely accepted international X.509 public key infrastructure (PKI) standard to verify that a public key belongs to the user, computer or service identity contained within the certificate.

XML
Extensible Markup Language is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. 

Zone
In the DNS, a contiguous portion of a domain consisting of names or delegations. Formally, a domain name belongs to exactly one (authoritative) zone.

zone (or ‘zone’)
A segment of an ENUM domain name (used in the Berlin Liaison Statement (now RFC 3026) solely for convenience).