Key Networking Terms You'll See in Connected

The Internet is an endless conversation between machines asking for things and machines providing them. Every term below describes who's talking, what they're saying, or what's getting in the way.

IP Address: How machines are known

An IP address is identity. Just as you're found by name, machines are found by number. 192.168.1.1 or 2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7334—it's how the network knows where you are. When Connected monitors an IP address, it's checking whether anyone's home at that location.

DNS: Translation between human and machine

You remember connected.app. Your computer needs 185.199.108.153. DNS translates between these two realities. When DNS breaks, the gap becomes unbridgeable. Connected monitors this translation to ensure what you remember can still be found.

Client and Server: The asking and the answering

One asks, one answers. The client (your browser, your phone) makes requests. The server fulfills them. This asymmetry—one providing, many receiving—is how the Internet scales. When a server goes down, every client asking goes unanswered.

Protocol: Shared language

Before computers can talk, they must agree on how to talk. Protocols are this agreement—the grammar of machine conversation. HTTP for web pages, SMTP for email, TCP for reliable delivery. Break the protocol and you get static instead of signal.

Port: Which door to knock on

The IP address is the building. The port is which entrance. Port 80 for regular web traffic, 443 for encrypted, 25 for email. Each service listens at its designated door. When Connected checks a port, it's verifying that someone's listening.

Bandwidth: How wide the pipe

Bandwidth is capacity, not speed. A highway with six lanes versus two. More bandwidth means more data flowing simultaneously, not necessarily faster. Your video streams smoothly not because bandwidth is fast, but because it's sufficient.

Latency: The delay before the answer

Bandwidth is how much. Latency is how long. The time between question and answer, measured in milliseconds. Light traveling through fiber is fast but not instant—physics imposes a floor. Network complexity adds a ceiling. Low latency means the conversation feels immediate, even when you're talking to a machine across the planet.

Uptime: Availability as reliability

Uptime is the percentage of time your service exists, from someone else's perspective. 99.9% sounds high until you realize it's 8.76 hours of invisibility per year. 99.99% is 52.56 minutes. Each additional nine costs exponentially more to achieve. Connected tracks uptime because reliability is measured not in promises but in presence.

Packet: Messages broken into pieces

Data doesn't travel whole—it travels in fragments. Your video, your email, your download: all shattered into packets, each finding its own path through the network, reassembled at arrival. This fragmentation enables resilience—routes can shift mid-transmission. When packets get lost, the message arrives incomplete or not at all.

Router: The pathfinder

Routers read addresses and make decisions. This packet goes left, that one goes right. Each router knows only its neighbors, yet packets find their way across continents through chains of local decisions. Your home router connects to your ISP's router, which connects to backbone routers, which connect to destination routers—a cascade of intelligent forwarding.

Firewall: The guardian at the gate

Not all traffic should pass. Firewalls filter based on rules: source, destination, port, protocol. They're the deliberate chokepoint, where policy meets packets. Sometimes connection problems are firewalls working correctly—blocking what you didn't realize you needed to allow.

TLS: Privacy in public

The Internet is a public space. Every packet passes through machines you don't control. TLS encrypts your conversation so eavesdroppers see gibberish. The padlock in your browser isn't decorative—it means your password, your credit card, your private message travels wrapped in mathematics that makes interception useless. Connected monitors TLS certificates because encryption breaks when certificates expire.

HTTP and HTTPS: The web's foundation

HTTP is how browsers and servers converse. Request, response. Ask for a page, receive HTML. HTTPS adds encryption—the same conversation, but private. The S is the difference between a postcard and a sealed envelope. Modern websites choose envelopes.

Why This Matters

When Connected alerts you to high latency, you'll know it means delays, not broken connections. When DNS fails, you'll understand why names stop working while IP addresses still do. When uptime drops, you'll recognize what percentage means in hours of absence.

These aren't abstractions. They're the infrastructure of presence—how machines find each other, talk to each other, and fail to reach each other. Understanding them means understanding what Connected protects: your ability to be found, to respond, to remain available in a network that only knows you by the reliability of your reply.