New to the industry?
Brush up on the acronyms — from ASN to XML — most commonly used by the network engineers and internet technologists in our community.
Internet Community Organization Names
Abbr |
Meaning |
AFRINIC |
African Network Information Centre |
AGWG |
ARIN Government Working Group |
APNIC |
Asia Pacific Network Information Centre |
ARIN |
American Registry for Internet Numbers |
ARPA |
Advanced Research Projects Agency |
ASO |
Address Supporting Organization |
ASO AC |
ASO Address Council |
CANTO |
Caribbean Association of National Telecommunication Organizations |
CITEL |
Inter-American Telecommunication Commission |
CTU |
Caribbean Telecommunications Union |
IAB |
Internet Architecture Board |
IANA |
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority |
ICANN |
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers |
ICANN GAC |
ICANN Government Advisory Committee |
IEPG |
Internet Engineering and Planning Group |
IESG |
Internet Engineering Steering Group |
IETF |
Internet Engineering Task Force |
IGF |
Internet Governance Forum |
ISOC |
Internet Society |
ITAC |
Internet Technical Advisory Committee |
ITU |
International Telecommunication Union |
ITU-T |
ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector |
LACNIC |
Latin American and Caribbean Internet Address Registry |
NANOG |
North American Network Operators’ Group |
NAv6TF |
North American IPv6 Task Force |
NRO |
Number Resource Organization |
NRO EC |
NRO Executive Council |
NRO NC |
NRO Number Council |
OECD |
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development |
RIPE |
Réseaux IP Européens |
RIPE NCC |
RIPE Network Coordination Centre |
WCIT |
World Conference on International Telecommunications |
WGIG |
Working Group on Internet Governance |
WSIS |
World Summit on the Information Society |
WTSA |
World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly |
WTFP |
World Telecommunications Policy Forum |
Technical Terms
Abbr |
Meaning |
AS |
Autonomous System |
ASN |
Autonomous System Number |
BGP |
Border Gateway Protocol |
CA |
Cryptographic Authentication |
CIDR |
Classless Inter-Domain Routing |
CPS |
Certification Practices Statement |
CRISP |
Cross Registry Information Service Protocol |
DNS |
Domain Name System |
DNSSEC |
Domain Name System Security |
ICMP |
Internet Control Message Protocol |
IN-ADDR |
Inverse Addressing |
IP |
Internet Protocol |
IPv4 |
Internet Protocol version 4 |
IPv6 |
Internet Protocol version 6 |
IRIS |
Internet Registry Information Services |
IRR |
Internet Routing Registry |
IXP |
Internet Exchange Point |
LAN |
Local Area Network |
LSN |
Large-Scale NAT |
NAT-PT |
Network Address Translation - Protocol Translation |
NIC |
Network Information Center |
NOC |
Network Operations Center |
PA |
Provider Aggregatable |
PGP |
Pretty Good Privacy |
PI |
Provider Independent |
ROA |
Route Origin Authorization |
Reg-RWS |
Registration RESTful Web Service |
REST |
Representational State Transfer |
RPKI |
Resource Public Key Infrastructure |
RPSL |
Routing Policy Specification Language |
RWhois |
Referral WHOIS |
SSL |
Secure Socket Layer |
SWIP |
Shared WHOIS Project |
TCP |
Transport Control Protocol |
UDP |
User Datagram Protocol |
ULA |
Unique Local Address |
VLSM |
Variable Length Subnet Mask |
WAN |
Wide Area Network |
Whois-RWS |
Whois RESTful Web Service |
XML |
Extensible Markup Language |
6 to 4 |
IPv4 Tunnel for IPv6 Traffic |