Glossary

Key terms used throughout the routerd documentation.

Networking terms

Term	Meaning
interface	A network interface on the host (physical NIC, VLAN, tunnel, etc.).
route / routing	A forwarding entry and the act of selecting it.
gateway	The next-hop router used to leave a network.
NAT	Network address translation.
NAPT	Dynamic many-to-one translation (port-overloaded NAT).
firewall	routerd's zone-based stateful filtering feature.
filter / rule	An individual allow or deny rule.
prefix delegation (PD)	DHCPv6 prefix delegation; a delegated IPv6 prefix the router redistributes to the LAN.
upstream	The provider side of DNS or routing.
egress / ingress	Outbound (egress) and inbound (ingress) traffic directions.

Declarative model terms

Term	Meaning
declarative	Describing the desired state rather than the steps to reach it.
resource	A typed object in the router configuration.
Kind	The type of a resource.
spec	The desired state of a resource.
status	The observed, actual state of a resource.
apply	Bringing the host toward the desired state (routerctl apply).
reconcile / reconcile loop	The process that drives the actual state toward the desired state.
controller	The component that reconciles a class of resources.
render	Building host artifacts (config files, units) from resources.
daemon	A long-lived helper process managed by routerd.
generation	The SQLite-backed configuration generation number.
owned / ownership	The record of which artifacts routerd manages.
bootstrap	Preparing a host so routerd can run on it.
appliance	A fixed-function deployment of routerd.
Tier (H/S/C/E)	Feature stage labels used as proper nouns.

Other notations

• Web Console is routerd's read-only web UI. WebConsole (the Kind that enables it) is a code identifier and is kept verbatim.