Sometimes we use\u00a0recursive acronyms<\/a>\u00a0such as\u00a0GNU<\/a>, which stands for \u201cGNU\u2019s Not Unix\u201d.\u00a0 Another good recursive acronym is YAML, which stands for YAML Ain’t Markup Language.<\/p>\n Sometimes acronyms are derived from computer functions, such as ROT13.\u00a0 ROT13 is pronounced \u201cwrote thirteen\u201d and is a method of rotating all the ASCII text characters by 13 (out of 26) characters to create a simple cypher to indicate spoiler alerts on\u00a0Usenet<\/a>\u00a0news feeds.\u00a0 Try your favorite\u00a0ROT13<\/a>\u00a0converter to decipher this \u201csecret\u201d message (VCi6 vf Orfg).<\/p>\n The\u00a0Urban Dictionary<\/a>\u00a0is filled with funny terms derived from our use of technology like ROTFLMAO, BTW, BRB, IMHO, AFAIK, NSFW, YMMV and meme.\u00a0 Speaking of which (IDNTIMWYTIM):<\/p>\n IT professionals can also be very particular about how these terms are pronounced.\u00a0 For example, the venerable\u00a0text editor vi<\/a>\u00a0is pronounced as an initialism, but its \u00a0improved clone\u00a0Vim<\/a>\u00a0(originally released for the Commodore Amiga) is pronounced like an acronym.\u00a0 There has also been much confusion about how to pronounce the IPv6 transition tunneling mechanism\u00a0Teredo<\/a>, but it is supposedly named after the shipworm, whose taxonomic genus is\u00a0Teredo<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sometimes IT people take these acronyms and initialisms and turn them into verbs.\u00a0 You might hear someone say \u201cI vi\u2019ed the file\u201d, \u201cthe server DHCP\u2019ed for its address\u201d, \u201cthe firewall NAT\u2019ed the connections\u201d, and even \u201cwe VLAN\u2019ed the network switch\u201d.\u00a0 Or \u201cDM me when you get a moment\u201d referring to the Direct Message feature in Twitter.<\/p>\n Sometimes IT folks take a common word and use it in a different context.\u00a0 An example of this would be the term\u00a0cookies<\/a>.\u00a0 And then again we completely invent our own words like BOGON, \u201c133t\u201d, and \u201cn00b\u201d.<\/p>\n In recent years, there have been some technologies that have been described by what they are not rather than what they are.\u00a0 It is not that these people are preaching\u00a0neo-luddism<\/a>\u00a0and are totally against technology innovations, but rather they have a strong opinion about a particular technology.<\/p>\n One example of this is the term \u201cNoSQL<\/a>\u201d.\u00a0 NoSQL refers to a database that does not use the\u00a0Structured Query Language<\/a>\u00a0(SQL) that has been a 30-year old method of interacting with a relational database.\u00a0 The NoSQL proponents are proud of their use of unstructured databases that perform auto-sharding, which breaks from the tradition of using SQL.\u00a0 To highlight this distinction, the term for this whole set of new databases is the antithesis of the previous-generation technology.<\/p>\n Another example of such an anti-term is \u201cServerless<\/a>\u201d computing.\u00a0 Serverless architectures are a model of cloud computing where a cloud consumer simply deploys their code into the cloud service provider\u2019s system and runs it on demand.\u00a0 The customer doesn\u2019t need to concern themselves with virtualized servers, or even software containers for that matter, their code just runs.\u00a0 The cloud consumer only pays for the amount of memory their code used and the time it took their code to run.\u00a0 The serverless proponents are proud of the fact that it is just their code running and they don\u2019t have to concern themselves with the underlying server infrastructure.\u00a0 Some people don\u2019t like how the term \u201cserverless\u201d is an anti-term and uses a negative to describe something positive.\u00a0 Some are lobbying to have the term changed to Function as a Service (FaaS), but the serverless term has caught hold and it might be too popular to change.\u00a0 Although, I must admit, \u201cV4Less\u201d has a concise ring to it.<\/p>\n If we were to apply this anti-terminology to IPv6, then would these IPv6-only networks be called No-IPv4 networks or IPv4less?<\/p>\n Many in the IPv6 community are enthusiastic about the benefits of \u201cthe new hotness\u201d that is IPv6 and consider IPv4 the \u201cold and busted\u201d Internet protocol.\u00a0 IPv6 proponents often preach the benefits of returning to the purity of the original end-to-end principle of computer networks, and have a natural revulsion for the use of NAT.\u00a0 IPv6 proponents often are so polarized against IPv4 that they might even prefer to think of IPv6 as the \u201canti-IPv4\u201d protocol.<\/p>\n There are many in the IPv6 community who would prefer to run an IPv6-only network.\u00a0 We in the\u00a0Infoblox IPv6 Center of Excellence (COE)<\/a>\u00a0have written frequently on the trend towards\u00a0IPv6-only network environments<\/a>.\u00a0 We have written about how\u00a0IPv6 can actually be faster than IPv4<\/a>\u00a0and why organizations might consider an IPv6-only deployment.\u00a0 We have written a 3-part blog series that covers how an ISP can use an IPv6-only core to connect subscriber legacy IPv4 devices (Part 1<\/a>,\u00a0Part 2<\/a>,\u00a0Part 3<\/a>).\u00a0 We have written about how enterprises may move\u00a0from IPv4-only to dual-stack to IPv6-only<\/a>.\u00a0 We have written about the how to\u00a0build the enterprise business case for IPv6-only<\/a>\u00a0and how\u00a0IPv6-only networks are more realistic that you might think<\/a>.\u00a0 We have also emphasized how organizations may move from\u00a0dual-stack to IPv6-only<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cisco has\u00a0recently announced<\/a>\u00a0how they have dedicated an entire building in their San Jose California campus to be an IPv6-only environment.\u00a0 Cisco\u2019s Building 23 will be a testing ground for using a single network protocol.\u00a0 Microsoft has also been\u00a0working on IPv6-only environments<\/a>\u00a0in their infrastructure to test applications and single-protocol use-cases.\u00a0 You are also likely to hear this IPv6-only message repeated at the upcoming\u00a02017 North American IPv6 Summit conference<\/a>\u00a0at LinkedIn on April 25-26, 2017.<\/p>\n When it comes to IPv6, there is a whole new set of terminology.\u00a0 As defined in Section 2 of IETF RFC 2460, an IPv6 \u201cnode\u201d is any device that implements IPv6 and a router is any \u201cnode\u201d that forwards IPv6 packets.\u00a0 An IPv6 \u201chost\u201d is an IPv6 node that is not a router, and is an end-system on an IPv6 network.<\/p>\n With IPv4, the\u00a0Address Resolution Protocol<\/a>\u00a0(ARP) is used to create a mapping of IPv4 address to layer-2 MAC addresses (referred to as an ARP cache).\u00a0 With IPv6, the\u00a0Neighbor Discovery Protocol<\/a>\u00a0(NDP) is used to create the binding of IPv6 addresses to layer-2 MAC addresses (referred to as a\u00a0neighbor cache<\/a>).<\/p>\n IPv4 packets have a\u00a0Time-To-Live<\/a>\u00a0(TTL) field in the header to help prevent packets from endlessly looping through the network.\u00a0 IPv6 packets have this same function, but the header field is referred to as a \u201cHop-Limit\u201d.\u00a0 There are many examples of how IPv6 is\u00a0functionally equivalent<\/a>\u00a0to IPv4.\u00a0 However, we should remember that these two protocols have very different address formats and header formats.<\/p>\n Because\u00a0Classless InterDomain Routing<\/a>\u00a0(CIDR) and the process of performing address subnetting are IPv4 terms, they are not applicable to IPv6.\u00a0 All IPv6 addresses use \u201cslash\u201d notation (not to be confused with the\u00a0popular rock guitarist<\/a>).\u00a0 IPv6 network addresses are referred to as prefixes and have a prefix length.<\/p>\n Picture Source: David Neal @reverentgeek\u00a0https:\/\/twitter.com\/reverentgeek\/status\/789135336437800960<\/a><\/p>\n IPv6, as with most IT concepts, comes with its own set of terminology and nomenclature.\u00a0 We can relate the IPv6 terms to the IPv4 terms we have been familiar with for decades.<\/p>\n More organizations will realize that dual-protocol is a transition strategy that eventually leads to running a network solely with IPv6.\u00a0 Even though we can refer to running a single-protocol IPv6 environment, we should refrain from using the anti-technology terms of No-IPv4 or IPv4less.<\/p>\n Most of the time \u201cyou are what you is<\/a>\u201d as\u00a0Frank Zappa<\/a>\u00a0so eloquently put it.\u00a0 But other times you could be the opposite.\u00a0 When it comes to computer networks, and more specifically IPv6, we should stick with the former and simply refer to the concept as IPv6-only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" IT Nomenclature Nomenclature in computer and networking technologies can often be confusing and sometimes even funny. We IT people have crazy ways of naming things and we frequently use\u00a0acronyms\u00a0and initialisms (or alphabetisms) to describe multi-word concepts.\u00a0 Just in case you forgot the difference between these two terms:\u00a0 An initialism is where we say the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":321,"featured_media":1845,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[38,31,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-1840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-community","8":"tag-ipv6","9":"tag-networking","10":"tag-protocols","11":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"IPv4-less](\"https:\/\/live-infoblox-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/infoblox-ipv4-less-acronym.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"IPv4-less](\"https:\/\/live-infoblox-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/infoblox-ipv4-less-acronym-2.png\")
<\/p>\nAnti-Technology Terms<\/h2>\n
![\"IPv4-less](\"https:\/\/live-infoblox-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/ipv4-less-logo.jpg\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\nShould we use No-IPv4 or IPv4less?<\/h2>\n
A Word on IPv6 Terminology<\/h2>\n
![\"Forward](\"https:\/\/live-infoblox-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/infoblox-forward-back-slash.jpg\")
<\/p>\nConclusions<\/h2>\n