Long time ago internet was only used by military in behalf of war, but not for today. Today, internet has become an important part of human lives. Nearly all aspect of lives are now need internet.

Internet itself is basically nothing but a collection of interconnected devices that communicate each other. They communicate each other using a protocol called TCP/IP. There are a number of terms in the internet world. As an active internet user you have to start to familiarize yourself with them, at least ones that are considered as the basic terms.

I have selected the top 12 basic internet terms that regularly used by people in a conversation so you don’t need to be inferior every time you get involved in a conversation regarding the internet.

1. Domain

In the context of web, we know some addresses like google.com, facebook.com, twitter,com and yeah, bettertechtips.com. They are some examples of domain name. What is actually domain?

A domain name is basically an alias of an IP address. Domain is created to ease us in remembering a certain web address since human brain tend to easier to remember word than number. Domain name is unique. You will never find two domains with the same name. A domain name consists of two parts, the actual alphabetical word or phrase (like “bettertechtips”) and the top level domain name that designates what kind of site it is (.com, .net, .org etc). Put these two parts together and you have a domain name: bettertechtips.com.

2. IP Address

All devices that connected to the internet have a public IP address. So, what is IP address?

IP address is an identifier assigned to each device connected to a network, whether it’s local or internet. All devices need an IP address to communicate each other. IP addresses are usually written and displayed in human-readable notations (like 192.168.254.1).

There are two common versions of IP address, IPv4 and IPv6. 192.168.254.1 is an example of IPv4 while IPv6 has a more complex addresses since it uses more bits.

3. DNS

DNS stands for Domain Name Server. It’s a kind of server that translate your IP address into a domain name so it (domain name) can be accessed in a web browser. If there were no DNS server, you have to type an IP address in your browser address bar every time you want to visit a certain website. Can’t imagine how hassle it is.

Every website has a public IP address which is translated into domain name. If you curious what is the IP address behind a domain name (Google for instance), you can use the ping tool. Take a look at the example below.

4. URL

If you visit a website and read a certain page, you will see a complex address on your browser address bar. Take a look at the screenshot below for example.

The highlighted part is known as URL, which stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Every address you see on the browser address bar is called URL. No matter if it’s short or long.

5. Hyperlink

If you have explored this website (bettertechtips.com) further, you will see some texts or images that refer to another pages, whether it’s pages within this website or pages to other website on the web. That’s we call it hyperlink. Every text or image that links to another page is called hyperlink.

Hyperlinks are how we can browse the web and visit web pages to read information quickly and easily. Without hyperlinks we have to manually type the full URL of a certain page every time we want to read it.

6. TCP/IP

There are many protocols in the computer network. Wait, what is protocol?

Protocol is a number of rules should be fulfilled by any device before it is being able to communicate each other using the same protocol. TCP/IP — which stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol is the basic set of protocols for sending data over the Internet. TCP/IP is the first thing you have to learn if you want to be a master in computer network.

7. Web Server

Web server is a software that enables you to access the app offered by a certain web address. Apache and Nginx are two examples of popular web server. Normally, a web server is installed on the super high-spec machines since it’s used for serving thousands or even millions request at the same time.

8. Firewall

Firewall is one of kinds of security tool to protect your computer from attacker. Firewall commonly adopted by a certain local network to prevent unauthorized parties from accessing data on another computer within the network; more about access management here. Firewall will only allows traffics that are considered as safe to enter to the network.

Firewall is basically divided into two types, personal firewall and network firewall. Most operating systems — Windows in particular — come with a firewall system to protect your computer from dangerous traffics.

9. Proxy Server

Proxy server has two major functions. First, it helps you to hide relevant information such as network address, location, etc from websites and other networked users. Second, it also play a role as a cache server for storing files from websites you have visited. So, every time you visit the same websites over and over, your computer will not directly download all files from the website you are visiting. Instead, it will check the proxy server whether you have visited the websites. If so, your computer will download the files from the proxy server. That’s why some network administrator also utilizing proxy server as a bandwidth saver.

10. Crawler

Crawler is not a strange term if you are running a SEO campaign to gain more visitors to your website. Crawler is a program on the search engine side that that crawl the web and index site information for search engine databases. Without crawler, search engine will have no databases to be displayed on the search results page.

11. SSL

When visiting a certain website you might will see the word of “secure” followed by HTTPS on the address bar of your browser. That’s the implementation of SSL. What is SSL?.

Stands for Secure Sockets Layer, SSL is a secure encryption web protocol used to make data safe when transmitted over the Internet. The implementation of SSL is widely-adopted by e-commerce and banking sites to keep financial data secure.

12. VPN

VPS allows you send and receive data across internet as if your computer were directly connected to the private network, but it is not. Internet users often use VPN to hide their relevant identity as they do with proxy server. If you want to know how a VPN works you can try using Opera web browser since it has a built-in VPN feature.