Internet of things (IoT) for Beginners: Getting Started

DHCP is the protocol by which a device joining a network asks for and receives an address, a subnet mask, a default gateway and DNS servers from a server, for a limited lease period, so that nobody has to configure addresses by hand.

A wireless LAN connects devices to a network over radio using the 802.11 family of standards, through access points that bridge the wireless medium onto the wired network and enforce the authentication and encryption that the shared airwaves demand.

TCP/IP is the family of protocols on which the internet runs: IP moves packets between addresses without guarantees, and TCP or UDP ride on top to deliver either a reliable ordered stream or fast unordered messages.

PaaS is a hosting layer that takes your source code and turns it into a running application for you, owning the machines, the runtime, the build, the routing, the certificates and the restarts, so that shipping becomes a push rather than a project.

Serverless computing runs your code only while an event is calling it: the provider conjures an execution environment on demand, throws it away afterwards, and charges for work performed instead of for capacity sitting idle.

A container is an application packaged together with the libraries and configuration it needs, run as an isolated process on a host that is already switched on, so the same package behaves the same way on a laptop, in a build pipeline and in production.