AFRINICAFRINIC (African Network Information Centre) is the regional Internet registry (RIR) for Africa. Its headquarters are in Ebene, Mauritius. Before AFRINIC was formed, IP addresses (IPv6 and IPv4) for Africa were distributed by the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), and the RIPE NCC. ICANN provisionally recognised AFRINIC on 11 October 2004. The registry became operational on 22 February 2005. ICANN gave it final recognition in April 2005.
Internet backboneThe Internet backbone may be defined by the principal data routes between large, strategically interconnected computer networks and core routers of the Internet. These data routes are hosted by commercial, government, academic and other high-capacity network centers, as well as the Internet exchange points and network access points, that exchange Internet traffic between the countries, continents, and across the oceans.
Default routeIn computer networking, the default route is a configuration of the Internet Protocol (IP) that establishes a forwarding rule for packets when no specific address of a next-hop host is available from the routing table or other routing mechanisms. The default route is generally the address of another router, which treats the packet the same way: if a route matches, the packet is forwarded accordingly, otherwise the packet is forwarded to the default route of that router.
Mobile IPMobile IP (or MIP) is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard communications protocol that is designed to allow mobile device users to move from one network to another while maintaining a permanent IP address. Mobile IP for IPv4 is described in IETF RFC 5944, and extensions are defined in IETF RFC 4721. Mobile IPv6, the IP mobility implementation for the next generation of the Internet Protocol, IPv6, is described in RFC 6275. The Mobile IP allows for location-independent routing of IP datagrams on the Internet.
Ping (networking utility)ping is a computer network administration software utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network. It is available for virtually all operating systems that have networking capability, including most embedded network administration software. Ping measures the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer that are echoed back to the source. The name comes from active sonar terminology that sends a pulse of sound and listens for the echo to detect objects under water.
Provider-independent address spaceA provider-independent address space (PI) is a block of IP addresses assigned by a regional Internet registry (RIR) directly to an end-user organization. The user must contract with a local Internet registry (LIR) through an Internet service provider to obtain routing of the address block within the Internet. Provider-independent addresses offer end-users the opportunity to change service providers without renumbering of their networks and to use multiple access providers in a multi-homed configuration.
6to46to4 is an Internet transition mechanism for migrating from Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) to version 6 (IPv6) and a system that allows IPv6 packets to be transmitted over an IPv4 network (generally the IPv4 Internet) without the need to configure explicit tunnels. Special relay servers are also in place that allow 6to4 networks to communicate with native IPv6 networks. 6to4 is especially relevant during the initial phases of deployment to full, native IPv6 connectivity, since IPv6 is not required on nodes between the host and the destination.
Fully qualified domain nameA fully qualified domain name (FQDN), sometimes also referred to as an absolute domain name, is a domain name that specifies its exact location in the tree hierarchy of the Domain Name System (DNS). It specifies all domain levels, including the top-level domain and the root zone. A fully qualified domain name is distinguished by its lack of ambiguity in terms of DNS zone location in the hierarchy of DNS labels: it can be interpreted only in one way.
Internet2Internet2 is a not-for-profit United States computer networking consortium led by members from the research and education communities, industry, and government. The Internet2 consortium administrative headquarters are located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices in Washington, D.C., and Emeryville, California. As of November 2013, Internet2 has over 500 members including 251 institutions of higher education, 9 partners and 76 members from industry, over 100 research and education networks or connector organizations, and 67 affiliate members.
Hop (networking)In wired computer networking, including the Internet, a hop occurs when a packet is passed from one network segment to the next. Data packets pass through routers as they travel between source and destination. The hop count refers to the number of network devices through which data passes from source to destination (depending on routing protocol, this may include the source/destination, that is, the first hop is counted as hop 0 or hop 1).