“What does the n in ngrok stand for?”
It’s short for network grok.
n, as in network. Unix network tools love the letter n. ngrok borrowed it from ngrep, which is grep for network packets.
grok, as in understand. Robert Heinlein coined the word in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it’s a Martian word for understanding something so thoroughly that you become part of it.
Because ngrok shows you your traffic.
“…I like the idea of being able to introspect things and look at them as they’re happening, so the name is kind of just a play on the word grok, coined by Heinlein, which is ‘to understand,’ and ‘n’ because there are a whole bunch of other network tools that start with [it]. It was kind of a play on ngrep.”
The agent has shipped with a local inspector from the start. Run ngrok, open localhost:4040, and watch every request and response cross your tunnel as it happens.
Thirteen years later, the same idea lives on in Traffic Inspector and in AI Gateway tracing.
But on March 18, 2013, all Alan had was a name, a fresh domain, and someone to tell.
- 1:05 PM
Alan: i finally came up with a great name for my new tool
Alan: ngrok
- 1:06 PM
Eric: nice!
Eric: network grok?
Alan: yep
Alan: like
Alan: ngrep
Eric: great name
Alan: i even own ngrok.com now
- 1:07 PM
Eric: sweet
Eric: there appears to be nothing there :P
Alan: not yet!