7 basic network terminologies for newbies

For professional webmasters and network experts terminologies like IP address, URL, Ports, hosting facilities, Web server, operating system and HTTP are familiar terms but for the newbies it’s of importance that they get acquainted with this terminologies which form the basic of their knowledge in the web development environment.

IP Address

An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a one-of-a-kind code that identifies a piece of networked equipment. These addresses are used in messages between network devices such as your computer’s network or wireless card, your ISP’s equipment, and all other devices between your machine and the one with whom it needs to communicate.

IP addresses are part of the network layer, which is one of seven layers in the OSI Model’s protocol suite. The International Organization for Standardization devised the OSI paradigm, which stands for Open Systems Interconnection. The OSI Model for networking divides the data transmission system into layers in an attempt to define where particular operations should be performed.

The OSI body’s recommended protocol suite is made up of seven layers. Data is transmitted over two routers and over the Internet in the diagram to reach its destination. Following the arrows, the data passes through multiple layers of communication and processing as it crosses the internal network, first router, public network (internet connection), recipient’s router, and is finally reassembled into its original form.

Until recently, most network equipment relied on IPv4, the fourth IP address protocol, which has been in use for nearly three decades. A pattern of four blocks of up to three digits separated by periods, with no block of numbers surpassing 255, such as 127.0.0.1 or 24.38.1.251, is typical for this format.

Private network segments of the addresses 192.168.xxx.xxx, 172.16.xxx.xxx to 172.31.xxx.xxx, and 10.0.xxx.xxx to 10.255.xxx.xxx are reserved for use within a network at your home, at work, or anywhere else where a group of devices are interconnected to the internet.

For devices on each of these networks, one or more of these blocks of numbers are used. A unique address from the rest of the world is required just for the equipment linking that local network to the Internet. By reading packets, or discrete pieces of messages exchanged across networks, that equipment will determine which computer within the network to send data to and from. This means that, depending on your home and work networks, your computer at home and your computer at work could both be 192.168.1.25. The connection between your home and office, however, is still assigned a different, unique number.

This network segmentation was done to slow down the rate at which unique addresses were consumed. IPv6, which is displayed as eight blocks of four hexadecimal numbers now separated by colons, was established to support today’s expanding number of devices. 2001:0db8:85a3:0042:1000:8a2e:0370:7334 is an example of a new address that can support around 4 billion unique addresses.

The actual messages sent between devices are divided into several parts. The components, known as packets, are sent one by one from the sender to the destination. Each packet is sent in the quickest possible manner, which means that some packets may follow various routes or exit a congested road to take another. This ensures that the message reaches the recipient as quickly as possible, but it also implies that packets may arrive in a different order than when they were sent.

The receiving computer sends any necessary responses after the packets are reassembled, and the process repeats. From the handshake packet, which announces a communication request, to the last piece of the packet, everything happens in fractions of a second.

URL

We use URLs, or universal resource locators, instead of IP addresses since most of us have trouble remembering what IP address is required to get to, say, Facebook (173.252.100.16). This allows us to navigate to our desired location using www.facebook.com rather than a long list of IP addresses.

Specialized servers (known as name servers) are in charge of responding to requests for this information from computers all over the world. If your router does not have a note of its own as to where facebook.com is, it will “ask” a name server, which will look it up in its records and respond.

A network address is made up of three parts: protocol, name, and resource id. The protocol specifies how you want to send and receive messages; for example, http:// is used to visit websites and ftp:/ is used to transfer files. The name of the site is what you associate with it, such as www.facebook.com, and the resource id, or URI, is everything after that, pointing to the specific file you want to see.

Ports

While an IP address and a URL will direct you to a specific web server, you may want to communicate with it in multiple ways or have it perform multiple tasks. Perhaps you’d like the server to handle email as well, or you’d like to update your files via FTP. These ports function as separate entrances to your server, allowing different programs to communicate without interfering with one another. Certain ports are commonly used for specific activities; for example, port 80 is the standard port for web traffic (your browser viewing a page), but port 21 is typically used for ftp.

Although applications can be configured to use any available port number, using standard ports is recommended in most cases because firewalls and other security devices may require additional configuration to prevent unwanted traffic from being blocked because it is arriving at an unusual, fire walled, or “locked” port.

Hosting Facilities

If you’re using a server that isn’t under your physical control and is managed by a third party, you’re probably working with a hosting company. Hosting facilities are primarily for-profit businesses that handle the physical infrastructure required to offer access to many clients’ websites.

The average period of time that all of a server’s services are operational and accessible to end users is known as up time. It’s a common metric for determining a hosting company’s ability to deliver on its promises.
The advantages of employing a hosting service are similar to those of other cloud computing services. Instead of investing in equipment and administering the server, you are paying to rent it or use its services.

Hosting facilities also have backup power sources and redundant internet connections, and they may even have multiple facilities that are physically dispersed to ensure that their clients have the best up time possible.

Web Server

The basic minimum is hardware, an operating system, and an HTTP server. The addition of a database and scripting language to a server expands its capabilities and is used in almost all servers.

In addition to the physical hardware, a typical web server has four components. The operating system, web server, database, and programming language are all included. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, which are all titled in the same order, and is one of the most popular combinations of these systems.

The operating system and HTTP server are all that is required to deliver static pages to a user.

Interactivity and the capacity for information to vary as a result of user interactions are added by the balance.

Operating System – Linux

Linus Torvalds built Linux in the early 1990s while still a student so that he could access UNIX computers at his institution without relying on an operating system.

HTTP Server – Apache

Apache is an open source web server that was designed with UNIX systems in mind. Apache is one of the most widely used server software, with versions available for UNIX, Linux, Windows, and Mac. Apache is the HTTP component of a web server, and it compiles the output of scripting languages, databases, and HTML files to generate content that is provided to the user.