<commit_before>---
title: Key Concepts
toc: true
---

Kong Enterprise uses common terms for entities and processes that have a specific meaning in context. This topic provides a conceptual overview of terms, and how they apply to Kong’s use cases.

## Admin

An Admin is a Kong Enterprise user account capable of accessing the Admin API or Kong Manager. With RBAC and Workspaces, access can be modified and limited to specific entities.

## Authentication
Authentication is the process by which a system validates the identity of a user account. It is a separate concept from authorization.

API gateway authentication is an important way to control the data that is allowed to be transmitted to and from your APIs. An API may have a restricted list of identities that are authorized to access it. Authentication is the process of proving an identity.

## Authorization
Authorization is the system of defining access to certain resources. In Kong Enterprise, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is the main authorization mode. To define authorization to an API, it is possible to use the ACL Plugin in conjunction with an authentication plugin.

## Client
A Kong Client refers to the downstream client making requests to Kong’s proxy port. It could be another service in a distributed application, a user’s identity, a user’s browser, or a specific device.

## Consumer
A Consumer object represents a client of a Service.

A Consumer is also the Admin API entity representing a developer or machine using the API. When using Kong, a Consumer only communicates with Kong which proxies every call to the said upstream API.

You can either rely on Kong as the primary datastore, or you can map the consumer list with your database to keep consistency between Kong and your existing primary datastore.

## Host
A Host represents the domain hosts (using DNS) intended to receive upstream traffic. In Kong, it is a list of domain names that match a Route object.

## Methods
Methods represent the HTTP methods available for requests. It accepts multiple values, for example, `GET`, `POST`, and `DELETE`. Its default value is empty (the HTTP method is not used for routing).<commit_msg>Changed Key Concepts title, added Beta description<commit_after>---
title: Key Concepts and Terminology
toc: true
---

Kong Enterprise uses common terms for entities and processes that have a specific meaning in context. This topic provides a conceptual overview of terms, and how they apply to Kong’s use cases.

## Admin

An Admin is a Kong Enterprise user account capable of accessing the Admin API or Kong Manager. With RBAC and Workspaces, access can be modified and limited to specific entities.

## Authentication
Authentication is the process by which a system validates the identity of a user account. It is a separate concept from authorization.

API gateway authentication is an important way to control the data that is allowed to be transmitted to and from your APIs. An API may have a restricted list of identities that are authorized to access it. Authentication is the process of proving an identity.

## Authorization
Authorization is the system of defining access to certain resources. In Kong Enterprise, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is the main authorization mode. To define authorization to an API, it is possible to use the ACL Plugin in conjunction with an authentication plugin.

## Beta
A Beta designation in Kong software means the functionality of a feature is of high-quality and can be deployed in a non-production environment. **A Beta feature should not be deployed in a production environment.** Some level of support is available for the feature, although user documentation might not be of the highest quality. A Beta feature is made available to the general public for usability testing and to gain feedback about the feature before releasing it as production-ready.

## Client
A Kong Client refers to the downstream client making requests to Kong’s proxy port. It could be another service in a distributed application, a user’s identity, a user’s browser, or a specific device.

## Consumer
A Consumer object represents a client of a Service.

A Consumer is also the Admin API entity representing a developer or machine using the API. When using Kong, a Consumer only communicates with Kong which proxies every call to the said upstream API.

You can either rely on Kong as the primary datastore, or you can map the consumer list with your database to keep consistency between Kong and your existing primary datastore.

## Host
A Host represents the domain hosts (using DNS) intended to receive upstream traffic. In Kong, it is a list of domain names that match a Route object.

## Methods
Methods represent the HTTP methods available for requests. It accepts multiple values, for example, `GET`, `POST`, and `DELETE`. Its default value is empty (the HTTP method is not used for routing).
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