The cloud symbol is the universally accepted icon used in audiovisual, IT, and

telecommunications diagrams to represent a network. It serves as an abstraction for a complex

network infrastructure, such as the Internet, a Wide Area Network (WAN), or a Local Area

Network (LAN), whose internal details are not relevant to the diagram. This convention is

formalized in standards governing architectural and system drawings for AV and related

technologies.

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1. AVIXA, CEA, CEDIA (2015). J-STD-710: Audio, Video and Control Architectural Drawing

Symbols Standard. This standard, co-published by AVIXA, explicitly defines the cloud shape as

the symbol for a "Network." (Note: Access to the full standard requires purchase, but its purpose

and contents are publicly documented by AVIXA).

2. Kurose, J. F., & Ross, K. W. (2021). Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (8th ed.).

Pearson. Chapter 1, "Computer Networks and the Internet," consistently uses the cloud symbol to

represent the network core and the broader internet in its architectural diagrams (e.g., Figure 1.2).

3. MIT OpenCourseWare. (2014). 6.02 Introduction to EECS II: Digital Communication Systems,

Fall 2012. Lecture slides and notes frequently use the cloud symbol to abstractly represent a

network or a communication channel between two endpoints. View on MIT OCW (See slide 11).