Glossary
Cloud, network and VPN glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms you’ll meet when buying hosting, setting up a server or choosing a VPN. Search, filter by topic or jump to a letter.
49 terms
B
Bandwidth Networking
How much data a connection can carry per second. Hosts often use the word loosely for monthly data transfer, which is a different limit.
BBR Networking
A TCP congestion-control method from Google that can help throughput on long or lossy links. It changes how TCP paces data; it does not shorten the distance packets travel, so it is not a ping fix.
C
CDN Networking
Content delivery network: a set of servers in many cities that keep copies of your static files near visitors, so pages load from somewhere closer than your origin server.
CGNAT Networking
Carrier-grade NAT. Your ISP shares one public IPv4 address among many homes, so your router never gets its own public address and incoming connections cannot reach you directly.
CIDR Networking
A way of writing an IP range as an address plus a prefix length, such as 10.0.0.0/24. The prefix says how many leading bits are fixed.
Colocation Hosting
You own the server hardware and rent rack space, power and network in someone else’s data centre.
Container Servers & DevOps
A packaged app plus everything it needs to run, isolated from other apps on the same machine but sharing the host’s kernel. Lighter than a virtual machine.
Control panel Hosting
A web dashboard for running a server without the command line: sites, databases, email, SSL. Examples include cPanel, Plesk, CyberPanel and SPanel.
cPanel Hosting
A widely used commercial hosting control panel. On a VPS it needs a paid licence, usually priced by the number of accounts.
CyberPanel Hosting
A free, open-source control panel built around OpenLiteSpeed, popular for WordPress on a VPS.
D
Data centre Hosting
The building where servers live. The city it sits in matters more for latency than the brand on the invoice.
DDoS Security
Distributed denial of service: flooding a server or network with traffic from many machines so real users cannot get through.
Dedicated IP VPN
An IP address assigned only to you. Some VPNs sell it as an add-on so you are not sharing an address with other users.
Dedicated server Hosting
A whole physical machine rented to one customer. More power and isolation than a VPS, at a higher price.
DNS Networking
The system that turns names like cloudbox.ph into IP addresses. DNS changes can take time to spread because answers are cached.
Docker Servers & DevOps
The most common tool for building and running containers. Docker Compose describes several containers in one file and starts them together.
E
Encryption Security
Scrambling data so only someone with the right key can read it. HTTPS and VPN tunnels both rely on it.
F
Firewall Security
Rules that decide which network traffic may reach a server. On Ubuntu, ufw is a simple front end; note that Docker-published ports can bypass ufw rules.
G
GCash Hosting
A Philippine e-wallet. Only some hosts accept it directly; others need a card or PayPal.
I
IPv4 / IPv6 Networking
The two versions of internet addresses. IPv4 addresses are scarce, which is why ISPs use CGNAT; IPv6 has room for every device to have its own.
J
Jitter Networking
How much latency varies from one packet to the next. High jitter makes calls choppy and games feel inconsistent even if the average ping looks fine.
K
Kill switch VPN
A VPN feature that blocks internet traffic if the tunnel drops, so data does not leak over the unprotected connection.
KVM Hosting
Kernel-based Virtual Machine, the Linux virtualisation technology behind many VPS plans. Each KVM VPS runs its own kernel.
L
Latency Networking
The time a packet takes to travel to a server and back, usually shown in milliseconds as “ping”. Distance and routing matter most.
LiteSpeed Cache Hosting
A WordPress caching plugin that works with LiteSpeed and OpenLiteSpeed web servers to serve saved copies of pages quickly.
M
Managed hosting Hosting
The provider looks after the server software, security updates and often backups, so you focus on the site. Costs more than self-managed.
Maya Hosting
A Philippine e-wallet and digital bank. Few international hosts name it at checkout; a Maya virtual card may work where cards are accepted.
Meshnet VPN
NordVPN’s free feature for linking your own devices into a private network, so you can reach them from anywhere.
Money-back guarantee Hosting
A window in which you can cancel for a refund. Read the terms: some exclude domains, setup fees or certain payment methods.
N
n8n Servers & DevOps
An open-source workflow automation tool you can self-host, often run with Docker on a VPS.
NAT Networking
Network address translation: a router lets many devices share one public address by rewriting addresses on the way out.
No-logs policy VPN
A VPN’s promise not to keep records of what you do online. An independent audit gives more confidence than the promise alone.
NVMe Hosting
A fast storage interface for SSDs. NVMe drives handle many small reads and writes better than older SATA SSDs.
O
OpenLiteSpeed Hosting
The free, open-source edition of the LiteSpeed web server, known for pairing well with WordPress caching.
P
Port forwarding Networking
A router rule that sends incoming traffic on a port to a device on your home network. It does not work behind CGNAT.
Promo price Hosting
The introductory price for the first term. Renewal is usually higher, so compare the renewal figure too.
R
Reverse proxy Servers & DevOps
A server that sits in front of your apps, receives requests and passes them on. Traefik, Nginx and Caddy are common choices, and they often handle HTTPS.
Root access Servers & DevOps
Full administrator control of a Linux server. Self-managed VPS plans give it to you; so does the responsibility for security.
S
SLA Hosting
Service level agreement: the uptime a provider commits to and what credit you get if they miss it.
Snapshot Servers & DevOps
A point-in-time copy of a whole server disk that you can restore or clone. Not a substitute for off-server backups.
SSH Servers & DevOps
Secure Shell: the encrypted way to log in to a Linux server’s command line. Use keys instead of passwords where you can.
SSL / TLS Security
The encryption behind HTTPS. Let’s Encrypt issues free certificates that renew automatically.
Swap Servers & DevOps
Disk space Linux uses as overflow memory. It stops crashes when RAM runs out but is far slower than real RAM.
T
Tunnel VPN
An encrypted connection that carries your traffic inside it, from your device to a VPN server or between two networks.
U
Uptime Hosting
The share of time a service is reachable. 99.9% still allows about 43 minutes of downtime in a 30-day month.
V
vCPU Hosting
A virtual CPU core on a VPS. It is a share of a physical core, so two plans with the same vCPU count can still perform differently.
VPN VPN
A virtual private network encrypts traffic between your device and a VPN server. Useful on public Wi-Fi and for reaching work systems remotely.
VPS Hosting
Virtual private server: a slice of a physical server with its own operating system, RAM and storage allocation, and usually root access.
W
WireGuard VPN
A modern, lightweight VPN protocol with a small codebase. Many VPN apps offer it, sometimes under their own brand name.
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