The Domain Name System (DNS) is the hierarchical and distributed naming system used to identify computers reachable through the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The resource records contained in the DNS associate domain names with other forms of information. These are most commonly used to map human-friendly domain names to the numerical IP addresses computers need to locate services and devices using the underlying network protocols, but have been extended over time to perform many other functions. The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label such as 192.0.2.1 that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two main functions: network interface identification and location addressing.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, and is intended to replace IPv4. In December 1998, IPv6 became a Draft Standard for the IETF, which subsequently ratified it as an Internet Standard on 14 July 2017.
Classless Inter-Domain Routing is a method for allocating IP addresses and for IP routing. The Internet Engineering Task Force introduced CIDR in 1993 to replace the previous classful network addressing architecture on the Internet. Its goal was to slow the growth of routing tables on routers across the Internet, and to help slow the rapid exhaustion of IPv4 addresses.
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous systems (AS) on the Internet. BGP is classified as a path-vector routing protocol, and it makes routing decisions based on paths, network policies, or rule-sets configured by a network administrator.
Dynamic DNS (DDNS) is a method of automatically updating a name server in the Domain Name System (DNS), often in real time, with the active DDNS configuration of its configured hostnames, addresses or other information.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Internet Protocol-related symbols and Internet numbers.
Network mapping is the study of the physical connectivity of networks e.g. the Internet. Network mapping discovers the devices on the network and their connectivity. It is not to be confused with network discovery or network enumerating which discovers devices on the network and their characteristics such as. The field of automated network mapping has taken on greater importance as networks become more dynamic and complex in nature.
Bogon filtering is the practice of filtering bogons, which are bogus (fake) IP addresses of a computer network. Bogons include IP packets on the public Internet that contain addresses that are not in any range allocated or delegated by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) or a delegated regional Internet registry (RIR) and allowed for public Internet use. The areas of unallocated address space are called the bogon space.
An autonomous system (AS) is a collection of connected Internet Protocol (IP) routing prefixes under the control of one or more network operators on behalf of a single administrative entity or domain, that presents a common and clearly defined routing policy to the Internet. Each AS is assigned an autonomous system number (ASN), for use in Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing. Autonomous System Numbers are assigned to Local Internet Registries (LIRs) and end user organizations by their respective Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), which in turn receive blocks of ASNs for reassignment from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The IANA also maintains a registry of ASNs which are reserved for private use.
Multihoming is the practice of connecting a host or a computer network to more than one network. This can be done in order to increase reliability or performance.
In Internet networking, a private network is a computer network that uses a private address space of IP addresses. These addresses are commonly used for local area networks (LANs) in residential, office, and enterprise environments. Both the IPv4 and the IPv6 specifications define private IP address ranges.
RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre) is the regional Internet registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. Its headquarters are in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with a branch office in Dubai, UAE.
WHOIS is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block or an autonomous system, but is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The current iteration of the WHOIS protocol was drafted by the Internet Society, and is documented in RFC 3912.
IPv4 address exhaustion is the depletion of the pool of unallocated IPv4 addresses. Because the original Internet architecture had fewer than 4.3 billion addresses available, depletion has been anticipated since the late 1980s, when the Internet started experiencing dramatic growth. This depletion is one of the reasons for the development and deployment of its successor protocol, IPv6. IPv4 and IPv6 coexist on the Internet.
An Internet Routing Registry (IRR) is a database of Internet route objects for determining, and sharing route and related information used for configuring routers, with a view to avoiding problematic issues between Internet service providers.
The Routing Assets Database (RADb), formerly known as the Routing Arbiter Database is a public database in which the operators of Internet networks publish authoritative declarations of routing policy for their Autonomous System (AS) which are, in turn, used by the operators of other Internet networks to configure their inbound routing policy filters. The RADb, operated by the University of Michigan's Merit Network, was the first such database, but others followed in its wake, forming a loose confederation of Internet routing registries, containing sometimes-overlapping, and sometimes-conflicting, routing policy data, expressed in Routing Policy Specification Language (RPSL) syntax.
Prefix WhoIs is an open source project that develops and operates a free whois-compatible framework for stockpiling and querying various routing and registry information. Prefix WhoIs uses global BGP routing data learned from many ISP backbone routers. Other information sources are also supported, such as imported data from every regional Internet registry and geocoding information.
Carrier-grade NAT, also known as large-scale NAT (LSN), is a type of Network address translation (NAT) for use in IPv4 network design. With CGNAT, end sites, in particular residential networks, are configured with private network addresses that are translated to public IPv4 addresses by middlebox network address translator devices embedded in the network operator's network, permitting the sharing of small pools of public addresses among many end sites. This shifts the NAT function and configuration thereof from the customer premises to the Internet service provider network.
Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), also known as Resource Certification, is a specialized public key infrastructure (PKI) framework to support improved security for the Internet's BGP routing infrastructure.