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Glossary

A quick reference for acronyms and terms used throughout this handbook. Most entries link to the Guide topic where the term is used in depth.

A

  • AP — Access Point. A device that provides Wi-Fi to client devices. Often the same physical hardware as a router, with one or more radios configured as APs.
  • AUCOOP. Associació d'Universitaris per a la Cooperació — a student volunteer association at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona. Maintains this handbook.

B

  • Backhaul. The link that carries traffic from a local access point back to the rest of the network. Often a wireless point-to-point link in community deployments.
  • BSSID. The MAC address of a Wi-Fi access point's radio. Lets clients distinguish between APs even when they share the same SSID.

C

  • Captive portal. A welcome page shown the first time a user connects to a Wi-Fi network — often used for terms of use or guest authentication. See Captive Portal.
  • CIDR. Classless Inter-Domain Routing — the /24-style notation for IP subnets. See IP Addressing.
  • CPE — Customer Premises Equipment. A device installed at the user end of a link — typically an outdoor antenna mounted on a building.

D

  • DHCP. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol — automatically hands out IP addresses to devices that connect to the network.
  • DNS. Domain Name System — turns names like nextcloud.example.org into IP addresses. See DNS.

F

  • FOSS — Free and Open Source Software. Software that is free to use, study, modify, and redistribute. This handbook commits to a FOSS-first stack.

G

  • Gateway. The device that routes traffic out of the local network towards the wider internet (or towards another network).

I

  • IP address. The numeric address of a device on a network. See IP Addressing.

L

  • LXC — Linux Containers. A lightweight virtualisation technology used by Proxmox. See Proxmox.

M

  • Mesh. A network topology where every node can relay traffic for other nodes, instead of all traffic going through a central point. See Wireless Mesh.
  • MTU — Maximum Transmission Unit. The largest packet size a network link can carry without fragmentation.

N

  • NAS — Network Attached Storage. A dedicated device that provides shared file storage to the network. See Storage.
  • NAT — Network Address Translation. Lets many devices share a single public IP address.
  • Netmaker. A management overlay built on WireGuard. See VPN.

O

  • OpenWISP. A platform for centrally managing fleets of OpenWrt devices. See OpenWISP.
  • OpenWrt. An open-source Linux-based firmware for routers and access points. See Flash OpenWrt.

P

  • PoE — Power over Ethernet. Carries electrical power and data over the same Ethernet cable. Common for outdoor APs and antennas.
  • Proxmox VE. An open-source type-1 hypervisor that runs VMs and LXC containers on a single server. See Proxmox.

R

  • RADIUS. A protocol for centralised user authentication. See RADIUS.

S

  • SNMP — Simple Network Management Protocol. Used by monitoring tools to collect metrics from network devices.
  • SSH — Secure Shell. An encrypted protocol for remote command-line access to a device. The standard way to administer routers, servers, and APs over the network.
  • SSID. The human-readable name of a Wi-Fi network.
  • Subnet. A subdivision of an IP network. Each subnet has its own address range.

U

  • UCI — Unified Configuration Interface. OpenWrt's configuration system. One consistent format for every part of the firmware.
  • UPS — Uninterruptible Power Supply. A battery that keeps equipment running through short power cuts. See Power and UPS.

V

  • VLAN — Virtual LAN. A way to split one physical network into multiple logical ones.
  • VM — Virtual Machine. A full guest operating system running on a hypervisor.
  • VPN — Virtual Private Network. An encrypted tunnel between machines or networks. See VPN.
  • VPS — Virtual Private Server. A virtual machine rented from a hosting provider, typically used to host a public-facing service or VPN endpoint. See Netmaker on a VPS.

W

  • WireGuard. A modern, lightweight VPN protocol built into the Linux kernel. See VPN.
  • WPA2 / WPA3. Wi-Fi encryption standards. WPA3 is newer; WPA2 is still widely supported.

Z

  • Zabbix. An open-source infrastructure monitoring system. See Zabbix.