Learning Center | Glossary

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

As EC2 instances come in a variety of different deployment types and cost models, this summary includes a great high level overview of all of the benefits that the most basic unit of cloud infrastructure can offer.

AMI

A description of what an Amazon Machine Image is and how they function as a library of virtualization templates that power most of the EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud.

AWS Account

A description of the most basic unit of cloud architecture that most people take for granted, the AWS Account. How to create one, billing requirements and why you need to verify a phone number.

AWS Cloud Watch

A 10,000 foot view of what CloudWatch is and how the metric data that you can pull from the dashboard or APIs gives you insight into the usage of every service component of the virtual stack.

AWS GuardDuty

The article provides insight into GuardDuty and how it can help you surface and take action on possible malicious actors from a predetermined threat model.

Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR)

Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR), also called supernetting, is a way to more flexibly allocate Internet Protocol (IP) addresses by creating unique and more granular identifiers for networks and individual devices.

Direct Connect

A digest of the capabilities available from a leased subscriber line known as Direct Connect (DX) which lands you into your AWS cloud without the need for a VPN.

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

A quick run-through on the high level concepts of ELB and how they break down across Application, Network and Classic load balancing services in AWS.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

An overview of the semantics and basic operational methods behind the FTP Protocol. It discusses the common features, modes of operation and a brief threat model.

Firewall

Taking us back to basics, this is an excellent run-down of what a firewall device does and how it holds the line between the trusted and untrusted.

Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)

FQDN stands for Fully Qualified Domain Name. An FQDN is the complete domain name that specifies the exact location of an entity (e.g., server) that is connected to the Internet. It also ties that entity to an IP address.

Internet Protocol Security (IPsec)

For the audience that wants to start going a few layers deep into the science behind one of the most common VPN protocols.

IP Address

The other white meat for networking. A great industry class definition and functional description of the computer internetworking addressing schema unit

Network Address Translation (NAT)

Network Address Translation (NAT) is a process that enables resources in private networks to connect to the Internet but prevents entities on the internet to initiate connections with the resources in private network. A device like a router with NAT capability translates the private addresses in the internal network into globally unique public IP addresses, thereby enabling resources in the private network to access resources outside its network (on the internet).

Network Latency

With networking, latency refers to the time it takes a packet of data to be transferred across a network. The delay in delivery is, optimally, as close to zero as possible. Low-latency networks have short delays while high-latency networks have long delays.

Network Load Balancing (NLB)

Network Load Balancing distributes network traffic across a single, virtual cluster of servers or virtual machines using the TCP/IP networking protocol rather than complex routing protocols, such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

Ping

The ping command is a lightweight network connectivity program that encapsulates ICMP echo request/reply payloads into routable IP packets that will test the reachability of any host on the internet with an IP address.

SD-WAN

A case-in-point review of the importance of SD-WAN concepts, the architecture and operational use-cases with a breakdown of the benefits.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is a security protocol invented by Taher Elgamal, the chief computer scientist at Netscape Communications.

Simple Storage Service (S3)

This article is a brief overview of the operational mechanics of the AWS Simple Storage Service known as S3 and how it relates to other IT operational paradigms.

Subnet

The most basic concept in networking besides the IP address has got to the subnet, which is detailed here in a few paragraphs that breaks down the broadcast domain container itself.

Virtual Gateway (VGW)

A virtual private gateway is a logical, fully redundant distributed edge routing function that sits at the edge of your VPC. As it is capable of terminating VPN connections from your on-prem or customer environments, the VPG is the VPN concentrator on the Amazon side of the Site-to-Site VPN connection.

Virtual Network (vNet)

Azure Virtual Network allows many types of Azure resources, such as Azure virtual machines (VMs), to communicate securely with each other, with the Internet, and with local networks. The scope of a virtual network is a single region; however, several virtual networks of different regions can be connected together by virtual network pairing.

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

A VPN or Virtual Private Network creates a private, encrypted connection over public, shared or private networks. It provides data protection and privacy by using dedicated connections, traffic encryption or secure, virtual tunneling.

Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Network Load Balancing distributes network traffic across a single, virtual cluster of servers or virtual machines using the TCP/IP networking protocol rather than complex routing protocols, such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).