Today I learned that I’ve been using the wrong term for network packets, since eh… ever. For my entire life I’ve been talking about “network packages”. I have no idea how that slipped through, but somehow it did in all conversations with network engineers, sysadmins, network professors, and more. I even got a degree in Internet Engineering without noticing. You can imagine my surprise to learn it’s called a “network packet” not “network package”.

I came across this, when I wanted to add a definition of “package-loss” to my previous article about “Package-loss in China”, which turns out, is wrong, at least in terms of terminology. Now I wonder, is it just me who got that wrong and in the past 10 years no one bothered to hint me at it, or is it something a lot of people get wrong, or does simply no one care?