Reference glossary
Internet infrastructure glossary
11 terms
This glossary defines 11core internet-infrastructure terms — from routing concepts like ASN, BGP, and MOAS to addressing ideas like CIDR and anycast — and links each definition to the live Whisper Canon pages that exemplify it. Every term has its own page with an evergreen definition and concrete examples drawn from the directory's record of hostnames, IP addresses, Autonomous Systems, prefixes, and countries.
All terms
- AnycastAnycast is an addressing technique where one IP address is announced from many locations, so each user reaches the nearest copy of a service.
- Autonomous System Number (ASN)An Autonomous System Number (ASN) is the globally unique identifier for a network that sets its own routing policy on the internet.
- Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the routing protocol that exchanges reachability information between the networks that make up the internet.
- CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing)CIDR is the notation and allocation scheme that writes IP address blocks as a base address plus a prefix length, such as 1.1.1.0/24.
- HostnameA hostname is a human-readable name for a machine or service on a network, such as www.example.com, resolved to an IP address through the DNS.
- IP GeolocationIP geolocation is the estimation of the real-world location associated with an IP address, derived from routing, registry, and observational data.
- MOAS (Multi-Origin Autonomous System)A MOAS event occurs when the same IP prefix is announced into the global routing table by more than one origin Autonomous System at the same time.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP)The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is Anthropic's open standard for connecting AI models to external tools and data sources.
- RIR (Regional Internet Registry)A Regional Internet Registry (RIR) is one of five organizations that allocate IP address space and Autonomous System Numbers within a world region.
- Top-Level Domain (TLD)A top-level domain (TLD) is the last label of a domain name, such as .com or .org, sitting at the top of the DNS naming hierarchy.
- WHOISWHOIS is the query system and the registration records that say who holds a domain name or block of IP addresses and when it was registered.