This is an attempt to clear up some of the alphabet soup of TLAs (Three-Letter Acronyms, and some with even more letters) that clog up everything you read about networking.

AES	Advanced Encryption Standard
ARQ	Automatic Repeat reQuest
ATM	Asynchronous Transfer Mode
BGP	Boundary Gateway Protocol
BSC	Binary Synchronous Communications
CPN	Customer Premise Equipment
CSMA/CD	Carrier Sense Multiple Access / Collision Detection
DDCMP	Digital Data Communications Message Protocol
DES	Data Encryption Standard
DHCP	Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
DNS	Domain Name System
DPLL	Digital Phase Locked Loop
DSL	Digital Subscriber Line
FDM	Frequency Division Multiplexing
FTP	File Transfer Protocol
GRP	Gateway Routing Protocol
HDLC	High-level Data Link Control
HTTP	HyperText Transfer Protocol
ICANN	Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICMP	Internet Control Message Protocol
IDEA	International Data Encryption Algorithm
IP	Internet Protocol
ISDN	Integrated Services Digital Network
ISO	International Standards Organization
JPEG	Joint Photography Expert Group
LAN	Local Area Network
LAPB	Link Access Procedure - Balanced
MAN	Metropolitan Area Network
MIME	Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
MPEG	Motion Picture Expert Group
MPLS	Multi-Protocol Label Switching
MSAU	Multi-Station Access Unit
NAT	Network Address Translation
NFS	Network File System
OSI	Open System Interconnection
POTS	Plain Old Telephone Service
PPP	Point-to-Point Protocol
RFC	Request for Comment
RIP	Routing Information Protocol
SDLC	Synchronous Data Link Control
SMTP	Simple Message Transfer Protocol
SNMP	Simple Network Management Protocol
SNRM	Set Normal Response Mode
STDM	Synchronous Time Division Multiplexing
TCP	Transmission Control Protocol
TFTP	Trivial File Transfer Protocol
UDP	User Datagram Protocol
VBR	Variable Bit Rate
VLAN	Virtual Local Area Network
WAN	Wide Area Network