Terminology
What is the World Bank regions?
The World Bank divides the world into seven geographic regions for the purposes of development finance, research, and reporting. These regions are used in BigDataCloud APIs as the wbRegion field.IDISO2 code...
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What is Border Gateway Protocol and BGP announcements?
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the routing protocol that governs how traffic moves between autonomous systems on the internet. It is the mechanism by which the global routing table is built and maintained — every AS uses BGP to tell its neighbours which IP address prefixes it can deliver traffic to....
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FIPS Codes FAQ: Understanding Geographic Identification with BigDataCloud API
What are FIPS codes?FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) codes are a set of numeric codes used to uniquely identify geographic areas within the United States. They were developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to ensure consistent identification of states, counties, and other geographic entities in computer systems and databases. The number of digits in FIPS codes varies depending on the level of geography....
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Understanding BigDataCloud's 'Confidence Value' for IP Geolocation Accuracy
The confidence value is BigDataCloud's measure of how reliable a geolocation result is for a given IP address. It's particularly relevant for dynamically assigned IPs, where a single point estimate can be misleading....
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Understanding the Hazard Report
The Hazard Report is BigDataCloud's consolidated view of IP address risk. It combines reactive signals (evidence of past malicious behaviour) with proactive indicators (the likelihood of future misuse) to help you make safer, faster decisions about incoming traffic, users, and transactions....
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Autonomous Systems (AS) in Network Management: An Overview
An Autonomous System (AS) is a collection of IP networks and routers managed by a single organisation under a unified routing policy. ISPs, large corporations, universities, and government agencies all typically operate as autonomous systems....
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What is Confidence Area?
Because many users share the same public IP address — through carrier-grade NAT on mobile networks, or shared broadband in homes and offices — it's not always possible to place an IP at a precise point. The Confidence Area makes this uncertainty explicit rather than hiding it behind a single coordinate that may be misleading....
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Canadian Geographic Codes FAQ: Understanding CSD Codes with BigDataCloud API
What are CSD codes?CSD (Census Subdivision) codes are a set of numeric codes used to uniquely identify geographic areas within Canada. They are part of Canada's geographic hierarchy and are used for various statistical and administrative purposes. The number of digits in CSD codes can vary depending on the province and level of geography....
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What is Hosting Likelihood?
In cybersecurity, identifying and blocking malicious IP addresses is essential — yet traditional methods have limitations. Most conventional approaches rely heavily on past attack signals: if an IP address has been seen attacking elsewhere, it’s likely to be flagged as a threat again. The same logic is often applied when attempting to identify anonymisers such as VPNs or proxies....
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What is CIDR Notation?
CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing) is the standard method used for IP address allocation and routing across both IPv4 and IPv6 networks. It replaced the older class-based system and allows network sizes to be defined more precisely, reducing waste and improving routing efficiency....
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