Glossary Home
Uptime
An alert interval is the period of time that average usage must exceed a threshold before triggering an alert.
Alerting within a computer monitoring system is the ability to send notifications when certain metrics fall outside of expected ranges.
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a network layer protocol used to diagnose problems between devices within a network.
In computing, monitoring is the process of gathering and visualizing data to improve awareness of system health and minimize response time when usage is outside of expected levels.
A trend indicates a general tendency in a data set over time. Trends are useful for recognizing changes and for predicting future behavior.
View all Uptime glossary content.
App Platform
The application specification, or app spec, is a YAML manifest that declaratively states everything about your App Platform app, including each resource and all of your app’s environment variables and configuration variables.
A buildpack is an open-source script that compiles apps as container images for a given programming language.
A content delivery network, also known as a content distribution network or CDN, is a geographically-distributed network of servers that deliver static content to users.
The console is an in-browser command-line terminal whose shell context is a running container instance for a given resource.
A container is a single running instance of a service, worker, or static site resource that you have shipped on App Platform, and is in essence a live, runtime instance of an image (the artifact produced by the build process).
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is a mechanism that permits loading resources on other origins, such as a domain, protocol, or port, via HTTP headers.
Databases come in two forms in App Platform: dev databases, which are not intended for production use, and managed databases, which are instances of a DigitalOcean managed database that you have created outside of App Platform and would like to use in production.
doctl (pronounced “dock-tul”, and short for “DigitalOcean Control”) is the official command-line interface for the DigitalOcean API.
An environment variable is a in-memory key/value pair that developers use to store configuration details about their app.
Failover is a high availability (HA) mechanism that monitors servers for failures and reroutes traffic or operations to a redundant server when the primary server fails.
A gVisor container runtime sandbox is an environment of processes to run containers. Each sandbox has its own isolated instance of Sentry and Gofer.
A health check is a scheduled HTTP or TCP request that you can configure to run on a repeating basis to ensure that a service is healthy.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
The HTTP route for a service is the publicly-accessible directory path that maps to the root of your service.
A container image, Docker image, or image, is a static file containing executable code that cannot be changed.
In App Platform, a job is a type of resource that is running server-side code written in a supported programming language, such as Python, Ruby, Go, Node.js, or PHP, and is not internet-accessible.
A load balancer distributes traffic across a backend pool of servers to improve the stability and responsiveness of an application.
Logs are captures of the standard output stream that you can inspect for information about activity related to your app.
Master node, or cluster master, is a unified endpoint within a cluster which oversees activity on each node.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a type of cloud service that offers deployment platforms to build, deploy, and scale applications on a subscription basis.
Push-to-deploy support enables you to automatically deploy site live once code is pushed to the GitHub repository using GitHub Actions.
In App Platform, a service is a type of resource that is accessible via public or internal ports, and running server-side code written in a supported programming language, such as Python, Ruby, Go, Node.js, or PHP.
In App Platform, a static site is a type of resource that only consists of a build process that produces static assets.
Tags are keywords associated with resources which help with managing resource ownership and organize lookups and actions on resources.
TXT records, or text records, define text information about sources outside of a domain. Common use cases for TXT records include creating email security records (DKIM and SPF records) and providing additional information about a domain.
Wildcard records are DNS records that direct requests for non-existent subdomains to a specified resource or IP address.
In App Platform, a worker is a type of resource that is running server-side code written in a supported programming language, such as Python, Ruby, Go, Node.js, or PHP, and is not internet-accessible.
View all App Platform glossary content.
Backups
A crash-consistent backup is a disk image that stores the state of a disk exactly as it was at a single point in time.
Disk images are software copies of physical disks. Disk images save the data of a physical disk, like a hard drive, to one or more files.
View all Backups glossary content.
Container Registry
A container image digest, image digest, or digest, is a unique, immutable identifier for a container image to deploy.
A container image, Docker image, or image, is a static file containing executable code that cannot be changed.
A load balancer distributes traffic across a backend pool of servers to improve the stability and responsiveness of an application.
A manifest file, or manifest, is a file containing metadata for a group of files that are part of a set unit.
A manifest list is a document that describes a container’s contents, loading sequences, points of origin, and points of destination.
Secrets are blobs of data, such as a password, which you do not want transmitted over a network or stored unencrypted.
Tags are keywords associated with resources which help with managing resource ownership and organize lookups and actions on resources.
View all Container Registry glossary content.
Custom Images
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol that automates the assignment of IP addresses.
Disk images are software copies of physical disks. Disk images save the data of a physical disk, like a hard drive, to one or more files.
A virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a system of desktop virtualization that hosts desktop environments on a centralized server.
A virtual machine disk (VMDK) file is a virtual file format (
.vmdk) for containers of virtual hard disk drives.View all Custom Images glossary content.
DNS
CAA records, or Certification Authority Authorization records, or provide additional confirmation for certification authorities (CAs) to validate or issue SSL certificates for a domain.
Classless Inter-Domain Routing notation, or CIDR notation, is a method of representing an IP address network range.
Domain Name System management, or DNS management, is the act of managing DNS records for a particular domain or set of domains. For example, you can add an A record to a domain like
example.com that points the domain to a Droplet’s IP address. This means that whenever a user types in example.com into their browser, the browser connects to Droplet’s IP and returns any websites that might be hosted there.
DNS records, or Domain Name System records, associate domain names map with IP addresses and other information. Common types of DNS records include A records, AAAA records, MX records, and NS records.
A DNS server, also known as a DNS resolver, is a server that contains a database of public DNS records and their associated hostnames.
MX records, or Mail Exchange records, define the mail servers responsible for accepting email on behalf of a domain.
NS records, or nameserver records, define which authoritative nameservers contain the DNS records for a domain.
PTR records, or pointer records (also known as reverse DNS or rDNS records), map an IP address to a domain name. PTR records are used for reverse DNS lookups.
SRV records, or service records, define the location (host and port) of specific services on a server. Some services, like SIP and XMPP/Jabber, require SRV records.
TTL, also known as time to live or hop limit, is the amount of time (also called hops) that a packet exists before being discarded by a router. TTL limits the lifespan of data within a network through attaching a time limit to data.
TXT records, or text records, define text information about sources outside of a domain. Common use cases for TXT records include creating email security records (DKIM and SPF records) and providing additional information about a domain.
Wildcard records are DNS records that direct requests for non-existent subdomains to a specified resource or IP address.
View all DNS glossary content.
Droplets
A container distribution is a Linux-based operating system optimized for handling containerized applications.
A central processing unit, also called a processor or CPU, is an essential piece of computer hardware that executes the instructions from a computer program.
Distributed Denial-of-Service, or DDoS, is a cyberattack method that attempts to disrupt the traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming the target with more traffic than it can handle.
A hop is the travel of a packet from one network to another, in order to get to a target destination.
A hypervisor is a virtual machine monitor (VMM) that allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on one host computer.
Mesh Virtual Private Networks (Mesh VPNs) are a peer-to-peer architecture where every node or peer in the network can connect directly to each other without a central gateway.
Multicast internet protocol (IP) routing, or multicast traffic, is a protocol for distributing data to multiple recipients.
A non-volatile memory express, or NVMe for short, is an optimized and scalable storage protocol that connects a host system to its memory subsystems.
An operating system, or OS, is a system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, such as Windows, macOS, or Linux.
An overlay network is a network where all the nodes correspond to nodes in an underlying network and are connected through logical or virtual links.
Packet loss is the situation when one or more packets (small pieces of data) do not make it to the targeted destination.
A port is a communication endpoint of a network connection. A port is identified using a port number for each transport protocol.
PTR records, or pointer records (also known as reverse DNS or rDNS records), map an IP address to a domain name. PTR records are used for reverse DNS lookups.
Random-Access Memory, or RAM, is a memory storage made to store and access memory on a short-term basis.
A site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) is a networking setup where two or more networks are privately connected.
A solid-state drive, or SSD, is a persistent data storage device. SSDs use flash memory, which significantly improves latency and I/O performance over older, electromechanical hard disk drives (HDDs).
SSH (Secure Shell Protocol) is a method to secure remote logins and communications from one computer to another which provides strong authentication and protects communication through strong encryption.
ssh/config is a OpenSSH client configuration file where ssh contains data about command-line options, user’s configuration file (~/.ssh/config), and system-wide configuration file (/etc/ssh/ssh_config).
Tags are keywords associated with resources which help with managing resource ownership and organize lookups and actions on resources.
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP or TCP) is a communication standard for programs and computing devices to exchange messages over a network.
User Datagram Protocol, or UDP, is an established low-latency connection communication protocol between applications.
A virtual central processing unit, virtual processor, or vCPU is a physical CPU assigned to a virtual machine (VM).
View all Droplets glossary content.
Firewalls
Classless Inter-Domain Routing notation, or CIDR notation, is a method of representing an IP address network range.
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a network layer protocol used to diagnose problems between devices within a network.
A port is a communication endpoint of a network connection. A port is identified using a port number for each transport protocol.
A protocol is a set of rules a client and server adhere to when exchanging data through the internet.
SSH (Secure Shell Protocol) is a method to secure remote logins and communications from one computer to another which provides strong authentication and protects communication through strong encryption.
Tags are keywords associated with resources which help with managing resource ownership and organize lookups and actions on resources.
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP or TCP) is a communication standard for programs and computing devices to exchange messages over a network.
User Datagram Protocol, or UDP, is an established low-latency connection communication protocol between applications.
View all Firewalls glossary content.
Functions
Function as a Service (FaaS) is a type of cloud service that allows you to develop, run, and manage reusable functions without needing to build and maintain a backend infrastructure.
A function is a reusable block of code that you can deploy to the DigitalOcean Functions service and then access via a URL. For example, you can write a traditional Node.js function that returns a list of products from a database and then deploy that function to the Functions service.
A namespace is a a collection of resources containing one or more functions hosted on the DigitalOcean Functions service.
View all Functions glossary content.
IPv6
A Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), or Absolute Domain Name, is a complete domain name that identifies a host or server.
IPv4, or Internet Protocol version 4, is a networking protocol that maps 32-bit IP addresses to devices on a network. IPv4 routes most of the network traffic on the internet.
IPv6, or Internet Protocol version 6, is a networking protocol that maps IP addresses to devices on a network. IPv6 is the most recent version of the IP protocol and greatly expands the available address space compared to IPv4.
PTR records, or pointer records (also known as reverse DNS or rDNS records), map an IP address to a domain name. PTR records are used for reverse DNS lookups.
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is a messaging protocol which controls how email transmissions are performed between computers in Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) networks.
A subnet, or subnetwork, is a network within another network meant to simplify routes between devices on a network.
A subnet mask splits an IP address, such as
255.255.255.0, into host and network addresses. The bits (digits) in a subnet mask indicates the number of bits that have been alloted to the network’s address and the number of bits available for host addresses in the network.View all IPv6 glossary content.
Kubernetes
Cluster networking is highly-coupled container-to-container, pod-to-pod, pod-to-service, or external-to-service communication.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
High-availability control plane is a control plane that has multiple replicas of each control plane component.
A container image, Docker image, or image, is a static file containing executable code that cannot be changed.
A load balancer distributes traffic across a backend pool of servers to improve the stability and responsiveness of an application.
Role-based access control (RBAC), also known as role-based security, restricts network access based on the role a user has within an organization.
Sticky session, or session persistence occurs when the load balancer creates a connection between a network and a user for a direction of the session.
View all Kubernetes glossary content.
Load Balancers
Autobahn|Testsuite is a fully-automated testsuite that verifies client and server implementations of the Websocket Protocol.
In load balancing, a backend pool is a group of resources, such as Droplets, whose traffic are managed by the load balancer.
A handshake is the authentication process between two networked devices to ensure that both devices are who they claim to be.
A health check is a scheduled HTTP or TCP request that you can configure to run on a repeating basis to ensure that a service is healthy.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
Keep-Alive, or keepalive, is a signal sent from one device to another in order to maintain the connection between the two devices.
A load balancer distributes traffic across a backend pool of servers to improve the stability and responsiveness of an application.
A proxy is a computer or software system that acts as a dedicated intermediary between an endpoint device and another server.
SSL passthrough is the process of passing SSL-encrypted traffic on to a backend server for decryption.
Sticky session, or session persistence occurs when the load balancer creates a connection between a network and a user for a direction of the session.
Tags are keywords associated with resources which help with managing resource ownership and organize lookups and actions on resources.
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a security protocol focused on privacy and data security for communication across the internet.
User Datagram Protocol, or UDP, is an established low-latency connection communication protocol between applications.
View all Load Balancers glossary content.
Marketplace
1-Click apps allows you to create different DigitalOcean resources with pre-installed features and configurations, enabling you to get your application running quickly.
Add-Ons are a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that allow you to add new features to your DigitalOcean resources and projects quickly without needing to go through typical software initialization and set up.
Hybrid clouds are cloud services that incorporate a private cloud infrastructure while being hosted by a public cloud service provider.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a type of cloud service that offers storage, computing, and networking resources on a subscription basis.
On-demand self-service cloud resources are resources that are provisioned without human interaction.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a type of cloud service that offers deployment platforms to build, deploy, and scale applications on a subscription basis.
Public clouds are servers accessed over the internet with public cloud services offered and hosted by a cloud service provider, such as DigitalOcean’s Droplets.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a type of cloud service that offers software solutions as a product, hosted by the cloud service provider on a subscription basis.
Vendor Lock-In, proprietary lock-in, or customer lock-in, is a situation where the cost of switching from one cloud vendor to another is too high, resulting in users being “stuck” with their original vendor.
View all Marketplace glossary content.
MongoDB
ACID compliance is a set of database characteristics consisting of Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability that ensure that database transactions are completed efficiently.
An access control list, or ACL, is a list of user permissions that controls access to a system resource.
Database as a Service, Managed Database Service, or DBaaS for short, is a cloud service that allows users to access a cloud database system without having a personal cloud data system on a subscription basis.
End-to-end encryption, or E2EE, is a system of communication that encrypts messages for everyone including the messaging service except the user receiving the message and the user that sent the message.
Failover is a high availability (HA) mechanism that monitors servers for failures and reroutes traffic or operations to a redundant server when the primary server fails.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
Hot standby is the act of listening for when a primary node fails in order for the standby node to take its place.
Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) is an open source disk encryption specification for block storage devices.
Point-in-time recovery, or PITR for short, ensures that automatic backups are made in order to restore or recover data made in a previous state of the server.
Tags are keywords associated with resources which help with managing resource ownership and organize lookups and actions on resources.
View all MongoDB glossary content.
Monitoring
An alert interval is the period of time that average usage must exceed a threshold before triggering an alert.
Alerting within a computer monitoring system is the ability to send notifications when certain metrics fall outside of expected ranges.
In computing, monitoring is the process of gathering and visualizing data to improve awareness of system health and minimize response time when usage is outside of expected levels.
Percentage units specify a value in relationship to the total available quantity, which is typically set at 100%. Percentages are useful for quantities with a known limit, like disk space.
Rate units specify a value in relation to another measure (most frequently time). Rate units usually tell you frequency of occurrence over a set time period so that you can compare magnitude. Rate units are useful when there is no easy-to-understand upper boundary that indicates total use or when it is more helpful to examine usage, like incoming bandwidth.
In computing, a resource is a basic component with limited availability. Resources include CPU, memory, disk space, or available bandwidth. You can track a resource in order to monitor the resource’s usage.
Time series data is data collected at regular intervals and arranged chronologically to examine changes over time.
A trend indicates a general tendency in a data set over time. Trends are useful for recognizing changes and for predicting future behavior.
View all Monitoring glossary content.
MySQL
ACID compliance is a set of database characteristics consisting of Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability that ensure that database transactions are completed efficiently.
An access control list, or ACL, is a list of user permissions that controls access to a system resource.
Connection status metric is a metric that measures the number of threads created, connected, and running in relation to a database’s connection limit.
Database as a Service, Managed Database Service, or DBaaS for short, is a cloud service that allows users to access a cloud database system without having a personal cloud data system on a subscription basis.
End-to-end encryption, or E2EE, is a system of communication that encrypts messages for everyone including the messaging service except the user receiving the message and the user that sent the message.
Failover is a high availability (HA) mechanism that monitors servers for failures and reroutes traffic or operations to a redundant server when the primary server fails.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
Hot standby is the act of listening for when a primary node fails in order for the standby node to take its place.
The index vs. sequential reads plot presents the proportion of reads that use an index over the total number of reads across all databases (schemas) on the master server.
Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) is an open source disk encryption specification for block storage devices.
Operations throughput metric is a measurement of throughput of fetch, insert, update, and delete operations across all databases on the server.
Point-in-time recovery, or PITR for short, ensures that automatic backups are made in order to restore or recover data made in a previous state of the server.
A port is a communication endpoint of a network connection. A port is identified using a port number for each transport protocol.
SQL mode, or
sql_mode is a MySQL system variable meant to configure operational characteristics of the MySQL server.
Tags are keywords associated with resources which help with managing resource ownership and organize lookups and actions on resources.
View all MySQL glossary content.
PostgreSQL
ACID compliance is a set of database characteristics consisting of Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability that ensure that database transactions are completed efficiently.
An access control list, or ACL, is a list of user permissions that controls access to a system resource.
Connection pooling is a cache of database connections used for future requests to the database as required.
Database as a Service, Managed Database Service, or DBaaS for short, is a cloud service that allows users to access a cloud database system without having a personal cloud data system on a subscription basis.
A deadlock is a situation when two or more programs, processes, or other components are mutually waiting for the other in order to access a resource, which prevents all of them from proceeding.
Failover is a high availability (HA) mechanism that monitors servers for failures and reroutes traffic or operations to a redundant server when the primary server fails.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
Hot standby is the act of listening for when a primary node fails in order for the standby node to take its place.
Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) is an open source disk encryption specification for block storage devices.
Operations throughput metric is a measurement of throughput of fetch, insert, update, and delete operations across all databases on the server.
Point-in-time recovery, or PITR for short, ensures that automatic backups are made in order to restore or recover data made in a previous state of the server.
A port is a communication endpoint of a network connection. A port is identified using a port number for each transport protocol.
Tags are keywords associated with resources which help with managing resource ownership and organize lookups and actions on resources.
View all PostgreSQL glossary content.
Projects
Project-based resources are a category of resources within a DigitalOcean Project, and are the foundation of a project.
View all Projects glossary content.
Redis
ACID compliance is a set of database characteristics consisting of Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability that ensure that database transactions are completed efficiently.
An access control list, or ACL, is a list of user permissions that controls access to a system resource.
Connection status metric is a metric that measures the number of threads created, connected, and running in relation to a database’s connection limit.
Database as a Service, Managed Database Service, or DBaaS for short, is a cloud service that allows users to access a cloud database system without having a personal cloud data system on a subscription basis.
Failover is a high availability (HA) mechanism that monitors servers for failures and reroutes traffic or operations to a redundant server when the primary server fails.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
Hot standby is the act of listening for when a primary node fails in order for the standby node to take its place.
Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) is an open source disk encryption specification for block storage devices.
Operations throughput metric is a measurement of throughput of fetch, insert, update, and delete operations across all databases on the server.
Point-in-time recovery, or PITR for short, ensures that automatic backups are made in order to restore or recover data made in a previous state of the server.
A port is a communication endpoint of a network connection. A port is identified using a port number for each transport protocol.
Tags are keywords associated with resources which help with managing resource ownership and organize lookups and actions on resources.
View all Redis glossary content.
Reserved IPs
Failover is a high availability (HA) mechanism that monitors servers for failures and reroutes traffic or operations to a redundant server when the primary server fails.
A gateway is a server or router that provides access to networks from other networks or the public internet.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
View all Reserved IPs glossary content.
Snapshots
Disk images are software copies of physical disks. Disk images save the data of a physical disk, like a hard drive, to one or more files.
View all Snapshots glossary content.
Spaces
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials is a header that, when set to true, tells browsers to expose the response to the frontend JavaScript code.
Access-Control-Allow-Methods is a header request that allows one or more HTTP methods when accessing a resource when responding to a preflight request.
Access-Control-Allow-Origin is a header request that states whether the response is shared with requesting code.
Access-Control-Expose-Headers is a header request that allows a server to show which response headers are available to scripts running in the browser.
Access-Control-Max-Age is a header request that determines how long to cache the results of a preflight request.
A content delivery network, also known as a content distribution network or CDN, is a geographically-distributed network of servers that deliver static content to users.
The Content Delivery Network (CDN) cache caches content such as images, videos, or webpages in a proxy server that are more closely located to end users.
A content delivery network (CDN) endpoint is a launching point or destination that is linked to the internet and receives communication and content between multiple servers.
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is a mechanism that permits loading resources on other origins, such as a domain, protocol, or port, via HTTP headers.
High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.
Secret keys are private, random tokens that serves as a username to grant access to a Spaces bucket.
TTL, also known as time to live or hop limit, is the amount of time (also called hops) that a packet exists before being discarded by a router. TTL limits the lifespan of data within a network through attaching a time limit to data.
View all Spaces glossary content.
Volumes
Attaching a DigitalOcean Block Storage Volume to a Droplet lets you mount the volume to make it accessible to the Droplet’s filesystem. Similarly, unattaching a volume from a Droplet lets you reattach it to another Droplet.
In cloud computing, block storage is a network-based way to store data. Block storage services, like DigitalOcean Volumes Block Storage, provide similar behavior to traditional block storage devices, like hard drives.
ext4, or fourth extended file system, is a journaling file system for Linux. ext4’s most common use case is formatting volumes, hard drives, and other computing storage solutions.
Formatting a storage device, like a hard drive or block storage, creates a filesystem on the device (and erases any existing data). You typically only need to format a device once, when you first create it.
IOPS, or input/output operations per second, is a measurement of the performance of storage devices. A higher IOPS measurement implies better performance for reading and writing data.
Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) is an open source disk encryption specification for block storage devices.
Mounting makes the data on a storage device, like block storage, available to the file system on a computer. Users on the computer can then read and write to mounted storage devices.
View all Volumes glossary content.
VPC
Classless Inter-Domain Routing notation, or CIDR notation, is a method of representing an IP address network range.
cloud-init is an industry standard instance initialization tool that allows you to inject customized configurations into a Droplet at creation time, such as setting up a user with specific privileges. Using cloud-init can save you provisioning and setup time by allowing you to automate common setup tasks.
A gateway is a server or router that provides access to networks from other networks or the public internet.
Internet Procotol (IP) is a communications protocol used to connect computers across a network, specifically the Internet. IP consists of rules and regulations for transmission of packets across a network including routing and addressing. IP ensures that the packets of data that travel across a network arrives at the correct location.
Network Size
Network size is the size of the VPC network. When configuring the private IP range, you can also customize the size of the network. The offered network sizes: /28 (16 usable IP addresses) to /16 (65536 usable IP addresses). The default size is /20 (4096 usable IP addresses).
Packets, or datagrams, are blocks of data that are transmitted by a computer or device and forwarded to other devices in a network, such as an application, server, or internet-accessible device. Packets are the the most basic unit of data transmission across networks and the internet.
View all VPC glossary content.