B Abbreviations

ARP

Address Resolution Potocol, protocol for finding out which IP-number belongs to a given hardware (ethernet, ...) address.

BSD

Berkeley System Distribution, Unix flavour developed at the University of California at Berkeley.

CCITT

International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee, defined networking-protocols such as X.25, X.400, X.500, ....

CSRG

Computer Systems Research Group, core developers of BSD.

DARPA

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, sponsor for developing TCP/IP.

DNS

Domain Name Service, method to map hostnames to IP-addresses and backvia a distributed database.

FQDN

Fully Qualified Domain Name, hostname plus domain.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol, program & TCP/IP-based protocol to transfer single files between machines.

HDLC

High-level Data Link Control, standard for data-exchange over point-to-point-link or multi-point link.

ISO

International Standard Organisation, standards organisation consisting of various sub-groups responsible for all kind of technical standards.

LAN

Local Area Network, building- or site-wide network.

LLC

Logical Link Control, layer right above the hardware, subclass of HDLC.

MSB

Most Significant Bit, bit in a machine word (byte, ...) with the most significance.

NFS

Networking File System, gives transparent access to remote files.

NIC

Network Information Center, responsible for coordinating all the names and IP-numbers used on a (usually wide area) network.

NIS

Network Information Service, method to share one database (e. g. `passwd'-file) between several machines; former Yellow Pages (YP).

NS

see XNS.

OSI

Open Systems Interconnected, standardized protocol suite.

PPP

Point to Point Protocol, transports several protocols (TCP/IP, DECnet, ... over serial lines.

RFC

Request For Comment, open definition of internet standards.

RIPE

Resaux IP Europe, central authority to hand out IP numbers in europe.

SLIP

Serial Line IP, transports IP-packets over serial line.

TCP/IP

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, most widespread networking protocol today.

TP

Twisted Pair, cable-type using pairs of wires twisted together for better immunity against spurious noise signals.

UCB

University of California at Berkeley; origin of the BSD-Unix and NetBSD.

WWW

World Wide Web, cause of the whole Internet hype.

X11

Version 11 of the X-Window-System developed at MIT.

XNS

Xeros Network System, network architecture developed by Xerox in the late 1970s to integrage their office products and computer systems. The Protocol's similar to TCP/IP.

YP

Yellow Pages, see NIS; renamed after conflicts with british telecom.