Category
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol hands out network settings automatically, so a device joining a network can configure itself without anyone typing anything. What it supplies. Not just an IP
It tells a device which part of an IP address identifies the network and which part identifies the host — and therefore whether a destination is local or has to go via the router. The decision it
Carrier-grade NAT is a technique ISPs use to share a single public IP address between many customers — a response to IPv4 address exhaustion, and a cause of a specific and confusing set of problems.
How far the fibre actually goes — and that single fact determines almost everything about the speed and reliability you get. FTTC — fibre to the cabinet. Fibre runs from the exchange to the green
Border Gateway Protocol is how independent networks tell each other which addresses they can reach. It is the routing system the entire internet depends on — and it works largely on trust, which is
A content delivery network is a distributed set of servers that store copies of a website's content close to its users — so the data travels a shorter distance and arrives sooner. The physical
The two ways networks connect to each other — and the distinction is essentially who pays whom. The internet is a network of networks. No single organisation runs it. Around a hundred thousand
Access to their network, and through it a share of a shared resource — which is why "up to" appears in every advertisement and why your speed varies by time of day. What the connection is. Your line
HTTPS is HTTP carried inside an encrypted and authenticated connection. The application protocol is the same; what changes is that a security layer sits underneath it, and that layer provides three
A regular, predictable drop is a strong clue, because genuinely random faults do not keep a schedule. There are a handful of mechanisms that produce this pattern. Some providers enforce a periodic
Port forwarding tells your router that unsolicited traffic arriving on a specific port should be sent to a specific device on your local network. It exists because address translation cannot
Most residential connections are deliberately asymmetric, meaning far more capacity is allocated to downloading than uploading. This is a design decision rather than a fault. Historically households
Bandwidth is how much data can move per second. Latency is how long a single piece of data takes to make the trip. They are independent, and confusing them leads people to buy capacity that does not
An IP address identifies a device on a network so traffic can be routed to it. The important distinction for everyday troubleshooting is between the address your device holds on your local network
The two bands trade range against capacity, and neither is better in general. The lower frequency travels further and passes through walls more effectively. The higher frequency carries substantially
Needing an occasional restart is normal. Needing one every few days is a symptom, and there are only a handful of realistic explanations. The most common is resource exhaustion. A router is a small
A DNS server translates names people can remember into the numeric addresses machines actually use to route traffic. Every connection you make begins with a lookup, and if that lookup fails nothing
They solve different problems and are often combined in one box, which is why the distinction gets lost. A modem connects your home to your internet provider, translating between the signalling used
The speed you buy is delivered to your router. What reaches your laptop is whatever survives the wireless link, and those two numbers are frequently very different. Testing over a cable is the
The message is telling you something precise and useful: your device successfully joined the local wireless network, but traffic is not reaching the wider internet. That splits the problem cleanly in