MTA - Networking Fundamentals: LANs, Addressing, Media Types

Authentication is the process of confirming that a user, device or service is who it claims to be, typically by checking something it knows, has or is.

Multi-factor authentication requires proof from at least two different kinds of factor, such as a password and a device-generated code, so that stealing one is not enough to log in.

Identity and access management is the set of policies and systems that create, verify, govern and retire identities and decide what each one may reach.

Routing is how packets move between networks: each router holds a table of known destinations and the next hop toward each, learned by configuration or by a protocol, and forwards each packet to the most specific match.

Switching is the forwarding of frames within a single network segment by a device that learns which hardware address sits on which port and sends each frame only where it needs to go.

A VLAN divides one physical switched network into several logical segments, each with its own broadcast domain, by tagging frames with a VLAN identifier so that ports and devices in different VLANs cannot reach each other without a router.

IaaS is the layer of cloud computing where you rent raw infrastructure through an API, meaning virtual machines, disks and networks, and take responsibility for the operating system and everything you install above it.

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.

Cloud hosting is the model in which servers, storage and databases are created on demand through an API from a provider's pooled hardware and billed for the time they exist, rather than rented as a fixed box by the month.

A web server is the program listening on a network port for HTTP requests and answering them, either by returning a file from disk or by handing the request to application code behind it.

Load balancing is the practice of putting one entry point in front of several interchangeable servers and distributing incoming requests among them by a chosen policy, so that no single machine carries the traffic and no single machine's failure takes the service down.