AP CSP Terms

Bandwidth

The capacity of data transfer in a system. Measured by bitrate.

Bitrate

The number of bits a system can send per second.

Latency

The time it takes for a bit to travel from sender to receiver.

Network

A group of 2 or more computer systems linked together.

Protocol

A widely agreed upon set of rules that standardize communication between machines.

IP Address

A unique address, 32 or 128 bits, assigned by an ISP or router, that identifies a device on a network.

IP Protocol

A set of rules / standards for addressing and routing packets of data on the Internet or other network.

IPv4

Older version of IP Address with 32 bits, that looks like 255.255.255.255, limited to about 4 billion cases.

IPv6

Newer version of IP Address with 128 bits, that looks like 8 sets of 4 hex values, scalable for the future.

MAC Address

A unique permanent hardware address, always 48 bits, that identifies a device to an ISP or router.

Domain

Unique name, along with TLD suffix, that identifies an organization and its resources on the Internet.

DNS

Domain Name System translates domain names to IP Addresses.

Render

Process of turning HTML, CSS, and JS into a visual interactive web page.

Top-Level Domain

Highest level grouping of domains, including com, gov, org, edu, net, and 2 letter country codes.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator of format protocol://sub.domain.tld/path/resource.type

Fault Tolerant

The ability of a system to continue operating without interruption when one or more of its components fail.

Packet

A small part of a digital message, along with metadata about it like the order, origination, and destination.

Redundancy

Multiple components exist that serve the same purpose, protecting from the failure of any one component.

Router

A networking device that receives and forwards data packets between two or more computer networks.

Scalable

Easy to add or swap out single items or levels without impacting the larger set of items and levels.

Cryptography

Mathematical techniques, typically very complex and based on large numbers, for encrypting and decrypting messages.

HTTP

Standard protocol used to send and receive web resources like HTML, CSS, and JS.

HTTPS

Extension of the HTTP protocol with cryptographic security included by default, based on SSL or TLS.

TCP

Guarantees reliable, ordered, and error-checked delivery of packets. Typically used for web and email.

UDP

No guarantee of delivery, ordering, or duplicate packets. Typically used for real-time communication.

Distributed Computing

Working on multiple devices at a time, simultaneously. Scalable, fault-tolerant, and reliable, but very complex.

Parallel Computing

Completing multiple tasks at a time, simultaneously. Difficult to setup and troubleshoot.

Sequential Computing

Completing one task at a time, in order. Easier to setup and troubleshoot.

Private Key

Key used to decrypt messages that only the owner can use.

Public Key

Key used to encrypt messages that anyone can use.

Certificate Authority

Trusted organization that is used to verify public keys are in fact legitimate.

DDoS

An attempt to deny access to a website by flooding the website’s servers with millions of computer requests.

Hash

One-way algorithm to compress data into a smaller fixed-size that is similar to encryption but non-reversible.

Phishing

The fraudulent practice of sending messages claiming to be from someone else in order to induce revealing personal information.

Spoofing

A hacker overwrites a domain name in a DNS server, causing the IP for that domain to point to the hacker’s website rather than the intended website.

Authentication

Process of proving that a person or thing is genuinely who or what they claim to be, like an identity check.

Authorization

Process of granting the right for a person or thing to access a specific resource, like a permission check.

Copyright

Form of protection for intellectual property, usually applied to creative works like art, music, books, and more.

Digital Divide

Refers to the fact that different countries, socio-economic groups, and individuals have different levels of computing access.

DMCA

Criminalizes the act of circumventing, or getting around, access controls that block access to copyrighted works.

Big O Notation

A measure of the worst-case execution time of an algorithm, relative to the number of inputs. Logarithmic, linear, and factorial are examples.

Complexity

A measure of both the execution time and memory usage of an algorithm, often represented using Big O Notation.

Efficiency

A measure of the amount of logical reasoning, sometimes measured in lines of code, required to create an algorithm.

Heuristic

A technique that may allow us to find an approximate solution when typical methods fail to find an exact solution or are too slow.

Simulation

Simplified model of more complex objects or phenomena. They mimic real-world events without the cost or danger of building and testing the phenomena in the real world.

Brute Force

A technique to find a solution by attempting to verify solutions one at a time until one is found. Brute force ignores efficiency, but computers still make it possible. Sometimes referred to as trial-and-error.

Decidable

A problem in which an algorithm can be constructed to answer “yes” or “no” for all inputs (e.g. “Is the number even?”). Usually specific cases are decidable, but often a more generalized version may not be decidable.

Intractable

A problem that cannot be solved in a reasonable time, even for small input sizes. Heuristic approaches may be helpful to find solutions in reasonable times. Examples are traveling salesmen and packaging optimizations. Also called computationally hard.

Undecidable

A problem in which no algorithm exists that always leads to a correct yes-or-no answer. It may have instances that have an algorithmic solution, but there is no algorithmic solution that solves all instances of the problem.

Unsolvable

A problem that cannot be solved exactly using any algorithm. Heuristic approaches may be helpful to find an approximate solution. Password hash algorithms are by definition one-way without a reversing algorithm.