Reference glossary
Internet infrastructure glossary
15 terms
This glossary defines 15core 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.
- Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) rebuilds individual static pages after deployment on a schedule, combining static speed with fresh data.
- IP GeolocationIP geolocation is the estimation of the real-world location associated with an IP address, derived from routing, registry, and observational data.
- JSON-LD (JSON for Linked Data)JSON-LD is a JSON-based format for embedding machine-readable structured data, like schema.org markup, into web pages.
- 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.
- React Server Components (RSC)React Server Components (RSC) render on the server and send no component JavaScript to the browser, shrinking the client-side bundle.
- 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.
- Static Site Generation (SSG)Static Site Generation (SSG) builds a website's pages ahead of time at build, so each request is served as ready-made HTML.
- 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.