Glossary

RFCs Publications Obsolete RFCs

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Description:

SNMP MIBs:
Working groups:
Links:

1

10Base2.
(RFC 1983) A physical layer communications specification for 10Mbps, baseband data transmission over a coaxial cable (Thinnet) with a maximum cable segment length of 200 meters.

10Base5.
(RFC 1983) A physical layer communications specification for 10Mbps, baseband data transmission over a coaxial cable (Thicknet) with a maximum cable segment length of 500 meters.

10BaseF.
(RFC 1983) A physical layer communications specification for 10Mbps, baseband data transmission over a fiber-optic cable.

10BaseT.
(RFC 1983) A physical layer communications specification for 10Mbps, baseband data transmission over a twisted-pair copper wire.

16ng, IP over IEEE 802.16 Networks.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded June 2010.


2

2000, The Internet and the Millennium Problem.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2000.


3

3GPP, Third Generation Partnership Project.
Organization. 3GPP is a cooperation of international telecommunication standards bodies developing technologies for cellular networks. This activity is supported by a membership composed of network operators, equipment vendors, content providers, and other suppliers to the mobile market. Some of the technologies being developed by 3GPP need URN namespaces that are managed so that they are unique and persistent.

3GPP2, Third Generation Partnership Project 2.
Organization.


6

6bone, IPv6 Backbone.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1997.

6Bone.
An environment supporting experimentation with the IPv6 protocols and products implementing it.

6lowpan, IPv6 over Low power WPAN.
IETF working group, Internet area.

6man, IPv6 Maintenance.
IETF working group, Internet area.


8

802.1Q.
IEEE specification. VLAN, Virtual LAN.

822ext, Internet Message Extensions.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 1993.


A

aaa, Authentication, Authorization and Accounting.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded January 2007.

AAAArch, Authentication Authorisation Accounting Architecture Research Group.
IRTF research group. Concluded October 2004.

aac, Authorization and Access Control.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1995.

acap, Application Configuration Access Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 2004.

acct, Internet Accounting.
IETF working group. Concluded April 1993.

acct2, Internet Accounting 2.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1997.

ACSE, Association Control Service Element.

AD, Administrative Domain.
(RFC 1983) A collection of hosts and routers, and the interconnecting network(s), managed by a single administrative authority.

addrconf, Address Autoconfiguration.
IETF working group. Concluded April 1996.

ADSL, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line.
A DSL variant that offers differing upload and download speeds and can be configured to deliver up to 6 megabits of data per second.

adslmib, ADSL MIB.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

aft, Authenticated Firewall Traversal.
IETF working group. Concluded October 2002.

agentx, SNMP Agent Extensibility.
IETF working group. Concluded June 2002.

ALC, Asynchronous Layered Coding.

ale, Address Lifetime Expectations.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded March 1995.

alertman, Alert Management.
IETF working group. Concluded December 1990.

alto, Application-Layer Traffic Optimization.
IETF working group, Applications area.
This working group is chartered to design and specify an Application-Layer Traffic Optimization service that will provide applications with information to perform better-than-random initial peer selection. ALTO services may take different approaches at balancing factors such as maximum bandwidth, minimum cross-domain traffic, lowest cost to the user, etc. The WG will consider the needs of BitTorrent, tracker-less P2P, and other applications, such as content delivery networks (CDN) and mirror selection.

ancp, Access Node Control Protocol.
IETF working group, Internet area.

ANSI, American National Standards Institute.
Organization. (RFC 1983) Responsible for approving U.S. standards in many areas, including computers and communications. Standards approved by this organization are often called ANSI standards (e.g., ANSI C is the version of the C language approved by ANSI). ANSI is a member of ISO.

anycast.

apex, Application Exchange.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 2003.

appleip, IP Over AppleTalk.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1996.

Application Layer.
Layer seven of the OSI model. This layer is responsible for managing communications between user applications.

applmib, Application MIB.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded July 1999.

APPN, Advanced Peer-to-Peer Network.
(RFC 2155) The aspect of Systems Network Architecture (SNA) that supports peer-to-peer networking.

Archie.
(RFC 2151) Developed in 1992 at the Computer Science Department at McGill University in Montreal, allows users to find software, data, and other information files that reside at anonymous FTP archive sites; the name of the program, reportedly, is derived from the word "archive" and not from the comic book character. Archie tracks the contents of several thousand anonymous FTP sites containing millions of files. The archie server automatically updates the information from each registered site about once a month, providing relatively up-to-date information without unduly stressing the network. Archie, however, is not as popular as it once was and many sites have not updated their information; as the examples below show, many of the catalog listings are several years old.

ARCNET.

ARPA, Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Organization. (RFC 1983) An agency of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. ARPA (formerly known as DARPA) was responsible for funding much of the development of the Internet we know today, including the Berkeley version of Unix and TCP/IP.

ARPANET, Advanced Research Projects Agency Network.
(RFC 1983) A pioneering longhaul network funded by ARPA. Now retired, it served as the basis for early networking research as well as a central backbone during the development of the Internet. The ARPANET consisted of individual packet switching computers interconnected by leased lines.

arts, The Arts: Sharing Center Stage on the Internet.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1997.

AS, Autonomous System.
(RFC 1812) A connected segment of a network topology that consists of a collection of subnetworks (with hosts attached) interconnected by a set of routes. The subnetworks and the routers are expected to be under the control of a single operations and maintenance (O&M) organization. Within an AS, routers may use one or more interior routing protocols, and sometimes several sets of metrics. An AS is expected to present to other ASs an appearence of a coherent interior routing plan, and a consistent picture of the destinations reachable through the AS. An AS is identified by an Autonomous System number.

[RFC 1930] Guidelines for creation, selection, and registration of an Autonomous System (AS).

[RFC 2270] Using a Dedicated AS for Sites Homed to a Single Provider.

[RFC 5398] Autonomous System (AS) Number Reservation for Documentation Use.

ASCII, American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
(RFC 1983) A standard character-to-number encoding widely used in the computer industry.

asid, Access, Searching and Indexing of Directories.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded February 1999.

ASON, Automatic Switched Optical Network.
An architecture specified by ITU-T Study Group 15 for the introduction of a control plane for optical networks. This architecture specifies a set of reference points that defines the relationship between the ASON architectural entities.

ASRG, Anti-Spam Research Group.
IRTF research group.

atommib, AToM MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded October 2004.

atompub, Atom Publishing Format and Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 2007.

autoconf, Ad-Hoc Network Autoconfiguration.
IETF working group, Internet area.

avt, Audio/Video Transport.
IETF working group, Transport area.


B

Bandwidth.
Data transmission speed measured in bits per second (bps) or the data capacity that can be delivered over a physical medium.

Baseband.
(RFC 1983) A transmission medium through which digital signals are sent without complicated frequency shifting. In general, only one communication channel is available at any given time. Ethernet is an example of a baseband network.

Baud.
The quantity of signals that are transmitted in bits per second (bps).

BCP, Best Current Practices RFCs.
(RFC 1983) A subseries of RFCs which are written to describe Best Current Practices in the Internet. Rather than specifying a protocol, these documents specify the best ways to use the protocols and the best ways to configure options to ensure interoperability between various vendors' products. BCPs carry the endorsement of the IESG.

beep, Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 2002.

behave, Behavior Engineering for Hindrance Avoidance.
IETF working group, Transport area.

Bellman-Ford.
Algorithm. A distance vector algorithm.

BER, Basic Encoding Rules.
(RFC 1983) Standard rules for encoding data units described in ASN.1. Sometimes incorrectly lumped under the term ASN.1, which properly refers only to the abstract syntax description language, not the encoding technique.

BER, Bit Error Rate.

bfd, Bidirectional Forwarding Detection.
IETF working group, Routing area.

bgmp, Border Gateway Multicast Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded.

bgp, Border Gateway Protocol.
IETF working group, Operational Requirements area. Concluded August 1994.

bgpdepl, BGP Deployment and Application.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1994.

Bitnet.
(RFC 1983) An academic computer network that provides interactive electronic mail and file transfer services, using a store-and-forward protocol, based on IBM Network Job Entry protocols. Bitnet-II encapsulates the Bitnet protocol within IP packets and depends on the Internet to route them.

bliss, Basic Level of Interoperability for SIP Services.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area.

Bluetooth.
A standard for low cost, low power local radio links.

bmwg, Benchmarking Methodology.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

BNF, Backus-Naur Form.

bridge, Bridge MIB.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded February 2006.

Bridge.
(RFC 1983) A device which forwards traffic between network segments based on datalink layer information. These segments would have a common network layer address.

[RFC 1286] Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges.

[RFC 1493] Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges.

[RFC 1525] Definitions of Managed Objects for Source Routing Bridges.

[RFC 2674] Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges with Traffic Classes, Multicast Filtering and Virtual LAN Extensions.

[RFC 4188] Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges.

Broadband.
(RFC 1983) A transmission medium capable of supporting a wide range of frequencies. It can carry multiple signals by dividing the total capacity of the medium into multiple, independent bandwidth channels, where each channel operates only on a specific range of frequencies.

Broadcast.
(RFC 1983) A special type of multicast packet which all nodes on the network are always willing to receive.

Broadcast storm.
(RFC 1983) An incorrect packet broadcast onto a network that causes multiple hosts to respond all at once, typically with equally incorrect packets which causes the storm to grow exponentially in severity.

Brouter.
(RFC 1983) A device which bridges some packets (i.e. forwards based on datalink layer information) and routes other packets (i.e. forwards based on network layer information). The bridge/route decision is based on configuration information.

btns, Better-Than-Nothing Security.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded March 2010.

Byte.
An 8 bit quantity. Also known as an octet.

Byte order.
The order in which bit strings are transmitted.


C

calsch, Calendaring and Scheduling.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded September 2004.

calsify, Calendaring and Scheduling Standards Simplification.
IETF working group, Applications area.

CAN, Campus Area Network.

capwap, Control And Provisioning of Wireless Access Points.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded May 2010.

cat, Common Authentication Technology.
IETF working group. Concluded July 2002. The goal of the Common Authentication Technology (CAT) Working Group is to provide distributed security services (which have included authentication, integrity, and confidentiality, and may broaden to include authorization) to a variety of protocol callers in a manner which insulates those callers from the specifics of underlying security mechanisms.

catenet.
(IEN 48) The term "catenet" was introduced by L. Pouzin in 1974 in his early paper on packet network interconnection. The U.S. DARPA research project on this subject has adopted the term to mean roughly "the collection of packet networks which are connected together." This is, however, not a sufficiently explicit definition to determine, for instance, whether a new network is in conformance with the rules for network interconnection which make the catenet function as a confederation of co-operating networks.

catnip, Common Architecture for Next Generation IP.
IETF working group. Concluded May 1995.

CATNIP, Common Architecture for Next Generation Internet Protocol.

ccamp, Common Control and Measurement Plane.
IETF working group, Routing area. This working group coordinates the work within the IETF defining a common control plane and a separate common measurement plane for physical path and core tunneling technologies of Internet and telecom service providers (ISPs and SPs), e.g. O-O and O-E-O optical switches, TDM Switches, Ethernet Switches, ATM and Frame Relay switches, IP encapsulation tunneling technologies, and MPLS in cooperation with the MPLS WG.

CCIRN, Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networks.
Organization. (RFC 1983) A committee that includes the United States FNC and its counterparts in North America and Europe. Co-chaired by the executive directors of the FNC and the European Association of Research Networks (RARE), the CCIRN provides a forum for cooperative planning among the principal North American and European research networking bodies.

CCITT, Comite Consultatif International de Telegraphique et Telephonique.
Organization. (RFC 1983) This organization is now part of the International Telecommunications Union and is responsible for making technical recommendations about telephone and data communications systems. Every four years CCITT holds plenary sessions where they adopt new standards; the most recent was in 1992. Recently, the ITU reorganized and CCITT was renamed the ITU-TSS.

cdi, Content Distribution Internetworking.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded June 2003.

CDI, Content Internetworking.

CERT, Computer Emergency Response Team.
Organization. (RFC 1983) CERT was formed by ARPA in November 1988 in response to the needs exhibited during the Internet worm incident. The CERT charter is to work with the Internet community to facilitate its response to computer security events involving Internet hosts, to take proactive steps to raise the community's awareness of computer security issues, and to conduct research targeted at improving the security of existing systems. CERT products and services include 24-hour technical assistance for responding to computer security incidents, product vulnerability assistance, technical documents, and tutorials. In addition, the team maintains a number of mailing lists (including one for CERT Advisories), and provides an anonymous FTP server where security-related documents and tools are archived.

CFRG, Crypto Forum Research Group.
IRTF research group.

CGI, Common Gateway Interface.
A communications specification for server side resources such as a Web server that provides real-time dynamic page feedback information to a web browser.

charmib, Character MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded July 1994.

chassis, Chassis MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded July 1993.

chronos, Distributed Scheduling Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded August 1992.

CIDR, Classless Inter-Domain Routing.
(RFC 2901) Historically, IP addresses were assigned within classes: Class A (8 bits of network address, 24 bits of host address), Class B (16 bits of network address, 16 bits of host address), or Class C (24 bits of network address, 8 bits of host address). With the advent of CIDR, address space is now allocated and assigned on bit boundaries. Using CIDR means you are able to assign addresses corresponding with the number of hosts on the network, thereby conserving address space.

cidrd, CIDR Deployment.
IETF working group, Operational Requirements area. Concluded December 1996.

cip, Connection IP.
IETF working group. Concluded September 1992.

cipso, Commercial Internet Protocol Security Option.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1995.

CNI, Coalition for Networked Information.
Organization. (RFC 1983) A consortium formed by American Research Libraries, CAUSE, and EDUCOM to promote the creation of, and access to, information resources in networked environments in order to enrich scholarship and enhance intellectual productivity.

CNRI, Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
Organization.

cnrp, Common Name Resolution Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded September 2002.

Codec.
A translator that converts audio or video to a compressed or uncompressed form.

codec, Internet Wideband Audio Codec.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure Area.

conex, Congestion Exposure.
IETF working group, Transport area.

congestion.
A network condition that occurs when the offered load exceeds the bandwidth capacity of a data communication path.

congestion collapse.
A network condition that occurs when an increase in the network load results in a decrease in the useful work done by the network.

conneg, Content Negotiation.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 2000.

connection.
(RFC 1945) A transport layer virtual circuit established between two application programs for the purpose of communication.

CORBA, Common Object Request Broker Architecture.

[RFC 2714] Schema for Representing CORBA Object References in an LDAP Directory.

core, Constrained RESTful Environments.
IETF working group, Applications area.

CPP, Common Profile for Presence.

[RFC 3859] Common Profile for Presence (CPP).

CREN, Corporation for Research and Educational Networking.
Organization. Bitnet and CSNET were consolidated under one administration. CSNET is no longer in operation.

crisp, Cross Registry Information Service Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 2009.

cryptography.

csi, Cga & Send maIntenance.
IETF working group, Internet area.

CSIRT,Computer Security Incident Response Team.
(RFC 3013) A team that performs, coordinates, and supports the response to security incidents that involve sites within a defined constituency.

CSMA/CA, Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance.
The carrier sense for a cable plant monitors the traffic conditions on a line to make sure that the way is clear to send packets to a destination. If a collision does happen then both transmissions stop and resend at different times.

CSMA/CD, Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection.


D

DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Organization. The US government agency that founded the ARPANET.

dasl, DAV Searching and Locating.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 2000.

DASS, Distributed Authentication Security Service.

Datagram.
A packet encapsulated within a frame which is transmitted in a packet-switching network from source to destination.

Data Link Layer.
Layer two of the OSI model. Responsible for packing the data from the physical layer into frames. This layer can detect and/or correct errors and manages the data flow between nodes.

dccp, Datagram Congestion Control Protocol.
IETF working group, Transport area.

DCE, Distributed Computing Environment.
(RFC 1983) An architecture of standard programming interfaces, conventions, and server functionalities (e.g., naming, distributed file system, remote procedure call) for distributing applications transparently across networks of heterogeneous computers. Promoted and controlled by the Open Software Foundation (OSF), a consortium led by Digital, IBM and Hewlett Packard.

DDDS, Dynamic Delegation Discovery System.
Algorithm.

DDN, Defense Data Network.
(RFC 1983) A global communications network serving the US Department of Defense composed of MILNET, other portions of the Internet, and classified networks which are not part of the Internet. The DDN is used to connect military installations and is managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency.

DDN NIC, Defense Data Network Network Information Center.
Organization. (RFC 1983) Previously called "The NIC", the DDN NIC's primary responsibility was the assignment of Internet network addresses and Autonomous System numbers, the administration of the root domain, and providing information and support services to the Internet for the DDN. Since the creation of the InterNIC, the DDN NIC performs these functions only for the DDN.

decade, DECoupled Application Data Enroute.
IETF working group, Applications area.

DECnet.

DECnet Phase IV.

decnetiv, DECnet Phase IV MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded December 1993.

deltav, Web Versioning and Configuration Management.
IETF working group. Concluded March 2002.

Dense mode.
(RFC 1812) In multicast forwarding, two paradigms are possible: in Dense Mode forwarding, a network multicast is forwarded as a data link layer multicast to all interfaces except that on which it was received, unless and until the router is instructed not to by a multicast routing neighbor.

dhc, Dynamic Host Configuration.
IETF working group, Internet area.

Differentiated Services.

Diffie-Hellman.
Public key exchange algorithm.
(RFC 2636) A public-key cryptography algorithm for exchanging secret keys. The equation is executed by each party of the session based on the exchange of independently generated public values.

diffserv, Differentiated Services.
IETF working group. Concluded March 2003.

dime, Diameter Maintanence and Extensions.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

DISA, Defense Information Systems Agency.
Organization. Formerly called the Defense Communications Agency (DCA), this is the government agency responsible for managing the DDN portion of the Internet, including the MILNET. Currently, DISA administers the DDN, and supports the user assistance services of the DDN NIC.

disi, Directory Information Services Infrastructure.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1993.

disman, Distributed Management.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded July 2006. The Distributed Management Working Group is chartered to define an initial set of managed objects for specific distributed network management applications which can be consistently developed and deployed. A distributed network manager is an applicaton that acts in a manager role to perform management functions and in an agent role so that it can be remotely controlled and observed.

dispatch, Dispatch.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area.

Distance vector.
Algorithm.

dkim, Domain Keys Identified Mail.
IETF working group, Security area.

dlswmib, Data Link Switching MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded April 2001. The DLSw MIB Working Group is chartered to define a set of managed objects for devices that support Data Link Switching (DLSw) version 1. DLSw is a method for encapsulating SNA (System Network Architecture) or NetBIOS (Network Basic Input Output Services) traffic in TCP/IP. DLSw is intended to aid in the transport of SNA and NetBIOS traffic across WANs. The objects will be the minimum necessary to provide the ability to monitor and control DLSw devices, supporting fault isolation, configuration and performance management. The set of objects will be consistent with the SNMP framework and existing SNMP standards.

dna, Detecting Network Attachment.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded October 2009.

DNAv4, Detecting Network Attachment in IPv4.

dns, Domain Name System.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1994.

dnsext, DNS Extensions.
IETF working group, Internet area.

dnsind, DNS IXFR, Notification, and Dynamic Update.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2000.

dnsop, Domain Name Server Operations.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

dnssec, Domain Name System Security.
IETF working group. Concluded December 1999.

DOCSIS, Data Over Cable Interface Specification.
(RFC 2670) A term referring to the ITU-T J.112 Annex B standard for cable modem systems.

Domain Name.
An address for a network connection in a readable format. A domain name on the URL can identify Internet web sites.

Dot Decimal Address.
A 32-bit decimal integer written with dots to indicate each 8 bits place. This representation is used for IP addresses.

DPNSS, Digital Private Network Signaling System.
An industry standard interface which is defined between a PBX and an Access Network (AN). DPNSS extends facilities that are normally only available between extensions on a single PBX to all extensions on PBXs that are connected in a private network. DPNSS was originally derived from BT's Digital Access Signaling System I (DASS I), and was enhanced where necessary to meet the private network requirements. Some of these enhancements were incorporated in DASS 2. DPNSS uses a 2048 kbits/s or 1544 kbits/s Digital Transmission System Interface.

drinks, Data for Reachability of Inter/tra-NetworK SIP.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area.

drums, Detailed Revision/Update of Message Standards.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 2001.

DSL, Digital Subscriber Line.
A technology that exploits unused frequencies on copper telephone lines to transmit traffic typically at multi-megabit speeds. DSL can allow voice and high-speed data to be sent simultaneously over the same line.

DSLAM, Digital Subscriber Line Access Module.
(RFC 2661) A network device used in the deployment of DSL service. This is typically a concentrator of individual DSL lines located in a central office or local exchange.

DSU/CSU, Data Service Unit/Channel Service Unit.
(RFC 1941) The digital equivalent of a modem. A Channel Service Unit connects to a telephone company-provided digital data circuit, and a Data Service Unit provides the electronics required to connect digital equipment to the CSU. Paired together a DSU/CSU allows computer equipment to be connected into the telephone digital service for highly conditioned, high speed data communications.

DTNRG, Delay-Tolerant Networking Research Group.
IRTF research group.

DWDM, Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing.


E

E.164.
The international public telecommunication numbering plan.

E1.
(RFC 1983) The basic building block for European multi-megabit data rates, with a bandwidth of 2.048 Mbps.

E2E, End-to-End.
IRTF research group.

E3.
(RFC 1983) A European standard for transmitting data at 57.344 Mbps.

eai, Email Address Internationalization.
IETF working group, Applications area.

eap, Extensible Authentication Protocol.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded June 2008.

EBCDIC, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code.
(RFC 1983) A standard character-to-number encoding used primarily by IBM computer systems.

ecm, Endpoint Congestion Management.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded June 2001.

ECML, Electronic Commerce Modeling Language.
(RFC 2706) A set of guidelines for web merchants that will enable electronic wallets from multiple vendors to fill in their web forms.

ECMP, Equal-Cost Multi-Path.
Routing algorithm. (RFC 2992) A routing technique for routing packets along multiple paths of equal cost. The forwarding engine identifies paths by next-hop. When forwarding a packet the router must decide which next-hop (path) to use.

ECN, Explicit Congestion Notification.

ECRIT, Emergency Context Resolution with Internet Technologies.

ecrit, Emergency Context Resolution with Internet Technologies.
IETF working group, Transport area.

edi, Electronic Data Interchange.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded July 1995.

ediint, Electronic Data Interchange-Internet Integration.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 2006.

EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Organization. (RFC 1983) A foundation established to address social and legal issues arising from the impact on society of the increasingly pervasive use of computers as a means of communication and information distribution.

eii, Emergency Information Infrastructure.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1997.

email.

[RFC 577] Mail Priority.

[RFC 1711] Classifications in E-mail Routing.

[RFC 3098] How to Advertise Responsibly Using E-Mail and Newsgroups or - how NOT to $$$$$ MAKE ENEMIES FAST! $$$$$.

[RFC 5383] Deployment Considerations for Lemonade-Compliant Mobile Email.

emu, EAP Method Update.
IETF working group, Security area.

enroll, Credential and Provisioning.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded October 2005.

entmib, Entity MIB.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded February 2006.

enum, Telephone Number Mapping.
IETF working group, Transport area.

ENUM.
A system that transforms E.164 numbers into domain names and then uses DNS services like delegation through NS records and NAPTR records to look up what services are available for a specific domain name.

[RFC 5346] Operational Requirements for ENUM-Based Softswitch Use.

eos, Evolution of SNMP.
IETF working group. Concluded.

ethermib, Ethernet MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1993.

Ethernet.
A local area network (LAN) software and hardware configuration. It utilizes Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) for host access to the network.

Exterior gateway protocol.
A class of protocols utilized between Autonomous Systems to exchange reachability information for a set of networks internal to a particular autonomous system to a neighboring autonomous system.


F

FAQ.
Frequently asked question.

fax, Internet Fax.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded February 2005.

fax.

fddi, IP Over FDDI.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1993.

fddimib, FDDI MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded September 1993.

FEC, Forward Error Correction.
(RFC 2354) This is the means by which repair data is added to a media stream, such that packet loss can be repaired by the receiver of that stream with no further reference to the sender. There are two classes of repair data which may be added to a stream: those which are independent of the contents of the stream, and those which use knowledge of the stream to improve the repair process.

fecframe, FEC Framework.
IETF working group, Transport area.
The charter of this group is to develop specifications for using forward error correction (FEC) codes with applications in the Internet to provide protection against packet loss. The group will develop a protocol framework for application of FEC codes to arbitrary packet flows over unreliable transport protocols over both IP multicast and unicast. The application of the FEC codec on an aggregate of multiple packet flows may be investigated and considered to be included in the solution.

FidoNet.
Organization. (RFC 1941) A network of computers interconnected using the FIDO dial-up protocols. The FIDO protocol provides a means of "store and forward" file transfer similar to UUCP.

find, Common Indexing Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded August 1999.

firewall.
(RFC 2588) A security gateway that controls access between a private adminstrative domain and the public Internet.

forces, Forwarding and Control Element Separation.
IETF working group, Routing area.

Foreign Agent.
(RFC 2356) Serves as a registration relayer and care of address for the mobile node as described in the Mobile IP IETF draft.

Forwarder.
Routing. (RFC 1812) The logical entity within a router that is responsible for switching packets among the router's interfaces. The Forwarder also makes the decisions to queue a packet for local delivery, to queue a packet for transmission out another interface or both.

Forwarding.
Routing. (RFC 1812) The process a router goes through for each packet received by the router. The packet may be consumed by the router, it may be output on one or more interfaces of the router, or both. Forwarding includes the process of deciding what to do with the packet as well as queuing it up for (possible) output or internal consumption.

Fragmentation.
When the size of a datagram exceeds the MTU of the transmission media, it needs to be divided into multiple datagrams. Fragmented datagrams are collected and reassembled at the destination.

Frame.
(RFC 1976) The unit of transmission at the data link layer. A frame may include a header and/or a trailer, along with some number of units of data.

Frame Relay.
Data link layer protocol. A low level network protocol for routing the packet through frame relay networks to remote locations. Initially, the network interface for Frame Relay was Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN). Other network interfaces can now be utilized.

frnetmib, Frame Relay Service MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2002.

ftpext, Extensions to FTP.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded.

fyiup, FYI Updates.
IETF working group. Concluded February 2001.


G

G.707.
SDH.

G.709.

GAIA, Generic Architecture for Information Availability.

Gateway.
(RFC 1983) The term "router" is now used in place of the original definition of "gateway". Currently, a gateway is a communications device/program which passes data between networks having similar functions but dissimilar implementations. This should not be confused with a protocol converter. By this definition, a router is a layer 3 (network layer) gateway, and a mail gateway is a layer 7 (application layer) gateway.

geopriv.

geopriv, Geographic Location/Privacy.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area.

GETS, Government Emergency Telecommunications Service.
An emergency telecommunications service available in the U.S. and is overseen by the National Communications System (NCS) -- an office established by the White House under an executive order and now a part of the Department of Homeland Security. Unlike "911", it is only accessible by authorized individuals. The majority of these individuals are from various government agencies like the Department of Transportation, NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (to name a few). In addition, a select set of individuals from private industry (telecommunications companies, utilities, etc.) that are involved in critical infrastructure recovery operations are also provided access to GETS. The purpose of GETS is to achieve a high probability that phone service will be available to selected authorized personnel in times of emergencies, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and other disasters, that may produce a burden in the form of call blocking (i.e., congestion) on the U.S. Public Switched Telephone Network by the general public. GETS is based in part on the ANSI T1.631 standard, specifying a High Probability of Completion for SS7 signaling.

gisd, Generic Internet Service Description.
IETF working group. Concluded October 1995.

GOSIP, Government OSI Profile.
(RFC 1983) A subset of OSI standards specific to U.S. Government procurements, designed to maximize interoperability in areas where plain OSI standards are ambiguous or allow excessive options.

GPRS, General Packet Radio Service.
A packet-switched bearer service supported in both GSM and UMTS networks. GPRS services in GSM are supported in the so-called Gb mode, whereas GPRS services in UMTS are supported in the so-called Iu mode. These two different modes of GPRS operation account for the different characteristics between the GPRS bearers in GSM and the GPRS bearers in UMTS.

grip, G & R for Security Incident Processing.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2002.

grow, Global Routing Operations.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

GSEC, Group Security Research Group.
IRTF research group. Concluded November 2004.

GSM, Global System for Mobile Communications.

gsmp, General Switch Management Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2004.

GSS, Generic Security Service.

[RFC 2203] RPCSEC_GSS Protocol Specification.

[RFC 5403] RPCSEC_GSS Version 2.

GSS-API, Generic Security Service Application Program Interface.
(RFC 2743) The Generic Security Service Application Program Interface (GSS-API), Version 2 provides security services to callers in a generic fashion, supportable with a range of underlying mechanisms and technologies and hence allowing source-level portability of applications to different environments.

[RFC 5587] Extended Generic Security Service Mechanism Inquiry APIs.

GSTN, Global Switched Telephone Network.


H

H.264
Video codec.

[RFC 3984] RTP Payload Format for H.264 Video.

H.323.

H.350.

harts, Humanities and Arts.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1997.

HDLC.

Heterogeneous network.
(RFC 1983) A network running multiple network layer protocols.

Hierarchical routing.
(RFC 1983) The complex problem of routing on large networks can be simplified by reducing the size of the networks. This is accomplished by breaking a network into a hierarchy of networks, where each level is responsible for its own routing. The Internet has, basically, three levels: the backbones, the mid-levels, and the stub networks. The backbones know how to route between the mid-levels, the mid-levels know how to route between the sites, and each site (being an autonomous system) knows how to route internally.

hip, Host Identity Protocol.
IETF working group, Internet area.

hip, Host Identity Protocol.
IRTF research group.

hokey, Handover Keying.
IETF working group, Security area.

Homogeneous network.
(RFC 1983) A network running a single network layer protocol.

Hop.
(RFC 1983) A term used in routing. A path to a destination on a network is a series of hops, through routers, away from the origin.

Host.
A node attached to a network that does not act as a router.

hostmib, Host Resources MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded September 1993.

hostreq, Host Requirements.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1991.

HPCC, High Performance Computing and Communications.
(RFC 1983) High performance computing encompasses advanced computing, communications, and information technologies, including scientific workstations, supercomputer systems, high speed networks, special purpose and experimental systems, the new generation of large scale parallel systems, and application and systems software with all components well integrated and linked over a high speed network.

HPR, High Performance Routing.

html, HyperText Markup Language.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded September 1996.

http, HyperText Transfer Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 2000.

httpbis, Hypertext Transfer Protocol Bis.
IETF working group, Operations and Management Area.

httpstate, HTTP State Management Mechanism.
IETF working group, Applications area.

Hub.
(RFC 1983) A device connected to several other devices. In ARCnet, a hub is used to connect several computers together. In a message handling service, a hub is used for the transfer of messages across the network.

hubmib, Ethernet Interfaces and Hub MIB.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded September 2007.

hybi, BiDirectional or Server-Initiated HTTP.
IETF working group, Applications area.


I

IAB, Internet Architecture Board.
Organization. (RFC 2057) A technical advisory group of the ISOC. It is chartered to provide oversight of the architecture of the Internet and its protocols, and to serve, in the context of the Internet standards process, as a body to which the decisions of the IESG may be appealed. The IAB is responsible for approving appointments to the IESG from among the nominees submitted by the IETF nominations committee and advising the IESG on the approval of Working Group charters.

[RFC 3777] IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and Recall Process: Operation of the Nominating and Recall Committees.

[RFC 5633] Nominating Committee Process: Earlier Announcement of Open Positions and Solicitation of Volunteers.

iafa, Internet Anonymous FTP Archives.
IETF working group. Concluded May 1994.

IANA, Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
Organization. (RFC 1983). The central registry for various Internet protocol parameters, such as port, protocol and enterprise numbers, and options, codes and types.

ICANN, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Organization.

icar, Improved Cross-Area Review.
IETF working group, General area. Concluded March 2005.

ICCB, Internet Configuration Control Board.
Established in 1981 by DARPA to help manage the DARPA Internet Program.

ICP, Initial Connection Protocol.

[RFC 165] A Proferred Official Initial Connection Protocol.

idmr, Inter-Domain Multicast Routing.
IETF working group. Concluded February 2005.

ident, TCP Client Identity Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1993.

idn, Internationalized Domain Name.
IETF working group. Concluded April 2003.

IDNA, Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications.
IDNA describes an architecture for supporting internationalized domain names. Labels containing non-ASCII characters can be represented by ACE labels, which begin with a special ACE prefix and contain only ASCII characters. The remainder of the label after the prefix is a Punycode encoding of a Unicode string satisfying certain constraints.

idnabis, Internationalized Domain Names in Applications Revised.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 2010.

idpr, Inter-Domain Policy Routing.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1995.

idr, Inter-Domain Routing.
IETF working group, Routing area.

ids, Integrated Directory Services.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 1998.

idwg, Intrusion Detection Exchange Format.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded March 2006. The purpose of this group is to define data formats and exchange procedures for sharing information of interest to intrusion detection and response systems, and to management systems which may need to interact with them. IDWG will coordinate its efforts with other IETF Working Groups.

IEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Organization. A professional organization that develops standards for computers and electronics.

IEN, Internet Experiment Note.
(RFC 1983) A series of reports pertinent to the Internet. IENs were published in parallel to RFCs and were intended to be "working documents." They have been replaced by Internet-Drafts and are currently of historic value only.

IEPG, Internet Engineering Planning Group.
Organization. (RFC 1983) A group, primarily composed of Internet service operators, whose goal is to promote a globally coordinated Internet operating environment. Membership is open to all.

ieprep, Internet Emergency Preparedness.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded September 2007.

IESG, Internet Engineering Steering Group.
Organization. (RFC 2057) The IESG is responsible for technical management of IETF activities and the Internet standards process. As a part of the ISOC, it administers the process according to the rules and procedures which have been ratified by the ISOC Trustees. The IESG is directly responsible for the actions associated with entry into and movement along the Internet "standards track," including final approval of specifications as Internet Standards. It is composed of the IETF Area Directors and the IETF Chair.

[RFC 3777] IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and Recall Process: Operation of the Nominating and Recall Committees.

[RFC 5633] Nominating Committee Process: Earlier Announcement of Open Positions and Solicitation of Volunteers.

IETF, Internet Engineering Task Force.
Organization. (RFC 2057) A self-organized group of people who make technical and other contributions to the engineering and evolution of the Internet and its technologies. It is the principal body engaged in the development of new Internet standard specifications. The IETF is divided into eight functional areas. They are: Applications, Internet, IP: Next Generation, Network Management, Operational Requirements, Routing, Security, Transport and User Services. Each area has one or two area directors. These area directors, along with the IETF/IESG Chair, form the IESG. The activities of the IETF are organized into working groups.

[RFC 3844] IETF Problem Resolution Process.

[RFC 4841] RFC 4181 Update to Recognize the IETF Trust.

[RFC 5377] Advice to the Trustees of the IETF Trust on Rights to Be Granted in IETF Documents.

[RFC 5378] Rights Contributors Provide to the IETF Trust.

[RFC 3978] IETF Rights in Contributions.

[RFC 4748] RFC 3978 Update to Recognize the IETF Trust.

IETF Journal.
An Internet Society publication produced in cooperation with the IETF. Our aim is to provide an easily understandable overview of what's happening in the world of Internet standards with a particular focus on the activities of the IETF Working Groups. Each issue will highlight some of the hot issues being discussed in IETF meetings and in the IETF mailing lists.

ifmib, Interfaces MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded September 2003.

IGES, Initial Graphics Exchange Specification.
(RFC 2077) Defines a neutral data format that allows for the digital exchange of information among computer-aided design (CAD) systems.

IGP, Interior Gateway Protocol.
(RFC 1812) A protocol that distributes routing information with an Autonomous System (AS).

iiir, Integration of Internet Information Resources.
IETF working group. Concluded April 1995.

IM, Instant Messaging.

imap, Internet Message Access Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded.

imapext, Internet Message Access Protocol Extension.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded June 2008.

imm, Interactive Multimedia.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1997.

IMP, Interface Message Processor.

[RFC 359] THE STATUS OF THE RELEASE OF THE NEW IMP SYSTEM (2600).

[RFC 331] IMP System Change Notification.

[RFC 343] IMP System Change Notification.

impp, Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded September 2004.

IMR, Internet Monthly Report.
(RFC 1983) Published monthly, the purpose of the Internet Monthly Reports is to communicate to the Internet Research Group the accomplishments, milestones reached, or problems discovered by the participating organizations.

IMRG, Internet Measurement Research Group.
IRTF research group.

imss, Internet and Management Support for Storage.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded January 2009.

inch, Extended Incident Handling.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded October 2006.

intarea, Internet Area Working Group.
IETF working group, Internet area.

Interior gateway protocol.
A type of protocol used to distribute routing information between the various routers in an Autonomous System.

Internet.
A world wide collection of connected networks. It consists of high speed data communication lines between large, distributed "backbone" networks. The Internet primarily uses the TCP/IP networking suite of protocols to transfer information.

Intranet.
A privately administered domain.

intserv, Integrated Services.
IETF working group. Concluded December 2000.

ion, Internetworking Over NBMA.
IETF working group. Concluded June 2000.

IOTP, Internet Open Trading Protocol.

[RFC 2801] Internet Open Trading Protocol - IOTP Version 1.0.

[RFC 2802] Digital Signatures for the v1.0 Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP).

[RFC 2935] Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP) HTTP Supplement.

[RFC 3354] Internet Open Trading Protocol Version 2 Requirements.

[RFC 3504] Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP) Version 1, Errata.

[RFC 3538] Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) Supplement for the v1.0 Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP).

[RFC 3867] Payment Application Programmers Interface (API) for v1.0 Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP).

IP Prioritization.
(RFC 2353) Typically, IP routers process packets as they are received. However, some IP routers prioritize packets based on IP precedence (the 3-bit field within the Type of Service byte of the IP header) or UDP port numbers.

ip1394, IP Over IEEE 1394.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded June 2000.

ipae, IP Address Encapsulation.
IETF working group. Concluded May 1993.

ipatm, IP Over Asynchronous Transfer Mode.
IETF working group. Concluded May 1996.

ipauth, IP Authentication.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded January 1991.

ipcdn, IP over Cable Data Network.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded April 2009.

ipdvb, IP over DVB.
IETF working group, Internet area.

ipfc, IP over Fibre Channel.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2002.

ipfix, IP Flow Information Export.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

ipidrp, OSI IDRP for IP Over IP.
IETF working group, Routing area. Concluded August 1994.

iplpdn, IP Over Large Public Data Networks.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1993.

IPng, IP next generation.

ipngwg, IPNG.
IETF working group. Renamed ipv6, IP Version 6 Working Group.

ipo, IP over Optical.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2004.

ipoib, IP over InfiniBand.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded July 2006.

iporpr, IP over Resilient Packet Rings.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded September 2008. Resilient Packet Rings (RPR), developed within the IEEE 802.17 RPR WG, provides substantial enhancements in both efficiency and flexibility over current bi-directional ring topologies. Benefits of resilient packet rings include spatial re-use (full utilization of both counter-rotating rings) while maintaining protection switching during media faults, as well as defined mechanisms for topology discovery, congestion control, and protection switching.

ipp, Internet Printing Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded August 2004.
The goal of this working group was to develop requirements for Internet Printing and to describe a model and semantics for Internet Printing.

ippcp, IP Payload Compression Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded September 1999.

ippm, IP Performance Metrics.
IETF working group, Transport area.

IPPM, IP Performance Metrics.

ipr, Intellectual Property Rights.
IETF working group, General area. Concluded November 2008.

ips, IP Storage.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded November 2007.
There is significant interest in using IP-based networks to transport block storage traffic. This group will pursue the pragmatic approach of encapsulating existing protocols, such as SCSI and Fibre Channel, in an IP-based transport or transports. The group will focus on the transport or transports and related issues (e.g., security, naming, discovery, and configuration), as opposed to modifying existing protocols. Standards for the protocols to be encapsulated are controlled by other standards organizations. The WG cannot assume that any changes it desires will be made in these standards, and hence will pursue approaches that do not depend on such changes unless they are unavoidable. In that case the WG will create a document to be forwarded to the standards group responsible for the technology explaining the issue and requesting the desired changes be considered. The WG will endeavor to ensure high quality communications with these standards organizations. The WG will consider whether a layered architecture providing common transport, security, and/or other functionality for its encapsulations is the best technical approach.

ipsec, IP Security Protocol.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded April 2005.

ipsecme, IP Security Maintenance and Extensions.
IETF working group, Security area.

IPsec.
Protocol suite. IPsec is designed to provide interoperable, high quality, cryptographically-based security for IPv4 and IPv6. The set of security services offered includes access control, connectionless integrity, data origin authentication, protection against replays (a form of partial sequence integrity), confidentiality (encryption), and limited traffic flow confidentiality. These services are provided at the IP layer, offering protection for IP and/or upper layer protocols.

ipseckey, IPSEC KEYing information resource record.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded March 2005.

ipsp, IP Security Policy.
IETF working group. Concluded March 2005.

ipsra, IP Security Remote Access.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded.

IPTC, International Press Telecommunications Council.
Established in 1965 to safeguard the telecommunications interests of the World's Press. Since the late 1970's its activities have primarily focussed on developing and publishing Industry Standards for the interchange of news data. At present, the IPTC membership is drawn mainly from the major news agencies around the globe but also it has a strong representation from Newspaper publishers as well as some vendors.

iptel, IP Telephony.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded March 2009.

ipv6, IP Version 6 Working Group.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded September 2007. Formerly known as ipngwg.

ipv6mib, IPv6 MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded October 1997.

ipvbi, IP over VBI.
IETF working group. Concluded December 1999.

ire, Internet Registry Evolution.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1997.

IRI, Internationalized Resource Identifier.

iri, Internationalized Resource Identifiers.
IETF working group, Applications area.

IRR, Internet Routing Registry.
(RFC 2650) A repository of routing policies. Currently, the IRR repository is a set of five repositories maintained at the following sites: the CA*Net registry in Canada, the ANS, CW and RADB registries in the United States of America, and the RIPE registry in Europe. The five repositories are run independently. However, each site exchanges its data with the others regularly (at least once a day and as often as every ten minutes). CW, CA*Net and ANS are private registries which contain the routing policies of the networks and the customer networks of CW, CA*Net, and ANS respectively. RADB and RIPE are both public registries, and any ISP can publish their policies in these registries. The registries all maintain up-to-date copies of one another's data. At any of the sites, the five registries can be inspected as a set. One should refrain from registering his/her data in more than one of the registries, as this practice leads almost invariably to inconsistencies in the data. The user trying to interpret the data is left in a confusing (at best) situation. CW, ANS and CA*Net customers are generally required to register their policies in their provider's registry. Others may register policies either at the RIPE or RADB registry, as preferred.

IRSG, Internet Research Steering Group.
Organization. (RFC 1983) The "governing body" of the IRTF.

IRTF, Internet Research Task Force.
Organization. (RFC 1983) The IRTF is chartered by the IAB to consider long-term Internet issues from a theoretical point of view. It has Research Groups, similar to IETF Working Groups, which are each tasked to discuss different research topics. Multi-cast audio/video conferencing and privacy enhanced mail are samples of IRTF output.

IS, Intermediate System.
(RFC 1983) An OSI system which performs network layer forwarding. It is analogous to an IP router.

ISAN, International Standard Audiovisual Number.
A standard numbering system for the unique and international identification of audiovisual works.

ISBN, International Standard Book Number.
(RFC 3187) A unique machine readable identification number, which marks any edition of a book unambiguously. This number is defined in ISO Standard 2108. The number has been in use now for 30 years and has revolutionised the international book-trade. 154 countries are officially ISBN members, and more countries are joining the system.

ISDN, Integrated Services Digital Network.
(RFC 1983) An emerging technology which is beginning to be offered by the telephone carriers of the world. ISDN combines voice and digital network services in a single medium, making it possible to offer customers digital data services as well as voice connections through a single "wire." The standards that define ISDN are specified by ITU.

isdnmib, ISDN MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1998.

isis, IS-IS for IP Internets.
IETF working group, Routing area.

isms, Integrated Security Model for SNMP.
IETF working group, Security area.

isn, Internet School Networking.
IETF working group. Concluded September 1998.

ISO, International Organization for Standardization.
Organization. (RFC 1983) A voluntary, nontreaty organization founded in 1946 which is responsible for creating international standards in many areas, including computers and communications. Its members are the national standards organizations of the 89 member countries, including ANSI for the USA.

ISO 10646.
Character set. (RFC 2279) The definition of a multiple-byte character set called the Universal Character Set (UCS) which encompasses most of the world's writing systems.

ISOC, Internet Society.
Organization. (RFC 1983) A non-profit, professional membership organization which facilitates and supports the technical evolution of the Internet, stimulates interest in and educates the scientific and academic communities, industry and the public about the technology, uses and applications of the Internet, and promotes the development of new applications for the system. The Society provides a forum for discussion and collaboration in the operation and use of the global Internet infrastructure. The Internet Society publishes a quarterly newsletter, the Internet Society News, and holds an annual conference, INET. The development of Internet technical standards takes place under the auspices of the Internet Society with substantial support from the Corporation for National Research Initiatives under a cooperative agreement with the US Federal Government.

ISODE, ISO Development Environment.
(RFC 1983) Software that allows OSI services to use a TCP/IP network.

ISP, Internet Service Provider.
A company that provides customer access to the Internet.

ispp, Internet Secure Payments Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1997.

issll, Integrated Services over Specific Link Layers.
IETF working group. Concluded.

itrace, ICMP Traceback.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded September 2003.

ITU, International Telecommunications Union.
Organization. An agency of the United Nations which coordinates the various national telecommunications standards so that people in one country can communicate with people in another country. Previously known as CCITT.

iup, Internet User Population.
IETF working group. Concluded November 1990.

IVM, Internet Voice Messaging.


J

Java.
Programming language.

JUGHEAD, Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display.
(RFC 2151) Another Gopher-adjunct, JUGHEAD, supports key word searches and the use of logical operators (AND, OR, and NOT). The result of a JUGHEAD search is a display of all menu items which match the search string which are located in the University of Manchester and UMIST Information Server, working from a static database that is re-created every day. JUGHEAD is available from many Gopher sites, although VERONICA may be a better tool for global searches.


K

karp, Keying and Authentication for Routing Protocols.
IETF working group, Routing area.

KEA, Key Exchange Algorithm.
Algorithm.

keyprov, Provisioning of Symmetric Keys.
IETF working group, Security area.

kink, Kerberized Internet Negotiation of Keys.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded April 2006.

kitten, Kitten (GSS-API Next Generation).
IETF working group, Security area.

Knowbot Information Service.
Directory service, TELNET port 185. (RFC 2151) KNOWBOT is an automated username database search tool that is related to WHOIS. The Knowbot Information Service (KIS), operated by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) in Reston, Virginia, provides a simple WHOIS-like interface that allows users to query several Internet user databases (White Pages services) all at one time. A single KIS query will automatically search the InterNIC, MILNET, MCImail, and PSI White Pages Pilot Project; other databases may also be included. KNOWBOT may be accessed by TELNETing to host info.cnri.reston.va.us with port 185. The help command will supply sufficient information to get started.

krb-wg, Kerberos WG.
IETF working group, Security area.


L

l1vpn, Layer 1 Virtual Private Networks.
IETF working group, Routing area. Concluded March 2009.

L1VPN, Layer 1 Virtual Private Network.

[RFC 5252] OSPF-Based Layer 1 VPN Auto-Discovery.

l2tpext, Layer Two Tunneling Protocol Extensions.
IETF working group, Internet area.

l2vpn, Layer 2 Virtual Private Networks.
IETF working group, Internet area.

l3vpn, Layer 3 Virtual Private Networks.
IETF working group, Internet area.

L3VPN, Layer 3 Virtual Private Network.

[RFC 4110] A Framework for Layer 3 Provider-Provisioned Virtual Private Networks (PPVPNs).

[RFC 4364] BGP/MPLS IP Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

[RFC 4365] Applicability Statement for BGP/MPLS IP Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

[RFC 4381] Analysis of the Security of BGP/MPLS IP Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

[RFC 4382] MPLS/BGP Layer 3 Virtual Private Network (VPN) Management Information Base.

[RFC 2547] BGP/MPLS VPNs.

LAN, Local Area Network.
(RFC 1983) A data network intended to serve an area of only a few square kilometers or less. Because the network is known to cover only a small area, optimizations can be made in the network signal protocols that permit data rates up to 100Mb/s.

lanman, LAN Manager.
IETF working group, Network Management area. Concluded March 1991.

LCT, Layered Coding Transport.

ldapbis, LDAP (v3) Revision.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded June 2006.

ldapext, LDAP Extension.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 2003.

ldup, LDAP Duplication/Replication/Update Protocols.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 2004.

ledbat, Low Extra Delay Background Transport.
IETF working group, Applications area.

lemonade, Enhancements to Internet email to support diverse service environments.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded February 2010.
This work group is tasked to provide a set of enhancements and profiles of Internet email submission, transport, and retrieval protocols to facilitate operation on platforms with constrained resources, or communications links with high latency or limited bandwidth. A primary goal of this work is to ensure that those profiles and enhancements continue to interoperate with the existing Internet email protocols in use on the Internet, so that these environments and more traditional Internet users have access to a seamless service.

Link.
A communications path between two or more devices. The physical path consists of a medium such as wires, cables or radio waves over which data can pass.

Link MTU.
The maximum transmission unit that can be sent over a link.

lisp, Locator/ID Separation Protocol.
IETF working group, Internet area.

list, Automated Internet Mailing List Services.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 1992.

LLC, Logical Link Control.
(RFC 1983) The upper portion of the datalink layer, as defined in IEEE 802.2. The LLC sublayer presents a uniform interface to the user of the datalink service, usually the network layer. Beneath the LLC sublayer is the MAC sublayer.

lsd, LDAP Service Deployment.
IETF working group. Concluded November 1998.

lsma, Large Scale Multicast Applications.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded February 2000.

ltans, Long-Term Archive and Notary Services.
IETF working group, Security area.
The objective of this working group is to define the requirements, data structures and protocols for the secure usage of the necessary archive and notary services.

ltru, Language Tag Registry Update.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded December 2009.

LTN, Long Thin Network.


M

MAC, Media Access Control.
The lower portion of the datalink layer. The MAC differs for various physical media. Examples include IEEE 802 addresses for Ethernet links and E.164 addresses for ISDN links.

madman, Mail and Directory Management.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded.

magma, Multicast & Anycast Group Membership.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded March 2009.

Mail-11.
(RFC 2162) Also known as DECnet mail and often improperly referred as VMSmail, is the proprietary protocol implemented by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to establish a real-time text messaging system among systems implementing the DECnet Phase IV and DECnet/OSI (CLNS) networking protocols.

mailext, Mail Extensions.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded June 1996.

malloc, Multicast-Address Allocation.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded July 2003.

MAN, Metropolitan Area Network.
(RFC 1983) A data network intended to serve an area approximating that of a large city. Such networks are being implemented by innovative techniques, such as running fiber cables through subway tunnels. A popular example of a MAN is SMDS.

manet, Mobile Ad-hoc Networks.
IETF working group, Routing area.

marf, Messaging Abuse Reporting Format.
IETF working group, Applications area.

marid, MTA Authorization Records in DNS.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded September 2004.

MARS, Multicast Address Resolution Server.
(RFC 2022) An extended analog of the ATM ARP Server introduced in RFC 1577. It acts as a registry, associating layer 3 multicast group identifiers with the ATM interfaces representing the group's members. MARS messages support the distribution of multicast group membership information between MARS and endpoints (hosts or routers). Endpoint address resolution entities query the MARS when a layer 3 address needs to be resolved to the set of ATM endpoints making up the group at any one time. Endpoints keep the MARS informed when they need to join or leave particular layer 3 groups. To provide for asynchronous notification of group membership changes the MARS manages a point to multipoint VC out to all endpoints desiring multicast support.

Martian.
(RFC 1983) A humorous term applied to packets that turn up unexpectedly on the wrong network because of bogus routing entries. Also used as a name for a packet which has an altogether bogus (non-registered or ill-formed) internet address.

MARTINI, Multiple AoR reachabiliTy InformatioN Indication.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure Area.

MATNET, Mobile Access Terminal Network.

MBONE, Multicast Backbone.
(RFC 1983) The Multicast Backbone is based on IP multicasting using class-D addresses. The mbone concept was adopted at the March 1992 IETF in San Diego, during which it was used to audiocast to 40 people throughout the world. At the following meeting, in Cambridge, the name mbone was adopted. Since then the audiocast has become full two-way audio/video conferencing using two video channels, four audio channels, and involving hundreds of remote users.

mboned, MBONE Deployment.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

mediactrl, Media Server Control.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area.
This work group will examine protocol extensions between media servers and their clients. However, modifying existing standard protocols, such as VoiceXML or SIP towards clients or MRCPv2 towards servers, is not in the work group's charter. The model of interest to this group is where the endpoint solely plays audio or video, transmits audio or video towards the server, and possibly transmits key press information towards the server. Alternate architectures, where the endpoint executes user interface commands, is outside the scope of the work group.

megaco, Media Gateway Control.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded March 2006.

mext, Mobility EXTensions for IPv6.
IETF working group, Internet Area.

mhsds, MHS-DS.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 1995.

mhtml, MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate HTML Documents.
IETF working group. Concluded June 1999.

midcom, Middlebox Communication.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded April 2008.

MIDCOM, Middlebox Communications.

MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface.

mif, Multiple Interfaces.
IETF working group, Internet area.

MILNET, Military Network.
The Department of Defense military network.

mimemhs, MIME-MHS Interworking.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded September 1993.

mimesgml, MIME Content-Type for SGML Documents.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded May 1996.

mip4, Mobility for IPv4.
IETF working group, Internet area.

mip6, Mobility for IPv6.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded November 2007.

mipshop, MIPv6 Signaling and Handoff Optimization.
IETF working group, Internet area.

mixer, MIME - X.400 Gateway.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 1998.

MIXER, Mime Internet X.400 Enhanced Relay.

mmb, Multi-Media Bridging.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1993.

mmusic, Multiparty Multimedia Session Control.
IETF working group, Transport area.

mobike, IKEv2 Mobility and Multihoming.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded April 2006.

mobileip, IP Routing for Wireless/Mobile Hosts.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded November 2003.
The Mobile IP Working Group has developed routing support to permit IP nodes using either IPv4 or IPv6 to seamlessly "roam" among IP subnetworks and media types. The Mobile IP method supports transparency above the IP layer, including the maintenance of active TCP connections and UDP port bindings. Where this level of transparency is not required, solutions such as DHCP and dynamic DNS updates may be adequate and techniques such as Mobile IP not needed. The WG moving forward will focus on deployment issues in Mobile IP and provide appropriate protocol solutions to address known deficiencies and shortcomings. The working group will endeavor to gain an understanding of data service in cellular systems such as GPRS, UMTS, CDMA2000, and interact with other standards bodies that are trying to adopt and deploy Mobile IP WG protocols in these contexts.

MobOpts, IP Mobility Optimizations.
IRTF research group.

modemmgt, Modem Management.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1994.

monami6, Mobile Nodes and Multiple Interfaces in IPv6.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded November 2007.

morg, Message ORGanization.
IETF working group, Applications area.

mospf, Multicast Extensions to OSPF.
IETF working group. Concluded May 2001.

mpls, Multiprotocol Label Switching.
IETF working group, Routing area.
The MPLS working group is responsible for standardizing a base technology for using label switching and for the implementation of label-switched paths over various packet based link-level technologies, such as Packet-over-Sonet, Frame Relay, ATM, and LAN technologies (e.g. all forms of Ethernet, Token Ring, etc.). This includes procedures and protocols for the distribution of labels between routers and encapsulation.

mpsnmp, SNMP Over a Multi-Protocol Internet.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1993.

mptcp, Multipath TCP.
IETF working group, Transport area.

mptrans, Multiprotocol Transport.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1997.

msdp, Multicast Source Discovery Protocol.
IETF working group, Routing area. Concluded January 2004.

msec, Multicast Security.
IETF working group, Security area.

msgtrk, Message Tracking Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 2004.

msi, Management Services Interface.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1991.

MSIX.
(RFC 2924) An XML-based protocol transported by HTTP that is used to make accounting service definitions and transmit service usage information. As its service definitions are parameterized and dynamic, it makes no definition of services or attributes itself, but allows implementors to make their own. It specifies only the base data types that attributes may take: STRING, UNISTRING, INT32, FLOAT, DOUBLE, BOOLEAN, TIMESTAMP.

MTU, Maximum Transmission Unit.
The maximum length of a frame that can be sent over a specific physical link.

mtudisc, IP MTU Discovery.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded September 1990.

multi6, Site Multihoming in IPv6.
IETF working group, Operations and Management Area. Concluded March 2007.

multicast.
(RFC 2022) The process whereby a source host or protocol entity sends a packet to multiple destinations simultaneously using a single, local 'transmit' operation. The more familiar cases of unicasting and broadcasting may be considered to be special cases of multicasting (with the packet delivered to one destination, or 'all' destinations, respectively).

Multihomed host.
(RFC 1983) A host which has more than one connection to a network. The host may send and receive data over any of the links but will not route traffic for other nodes.

multimob, Mobility Multicast.
IETF working group, Internet area.


N

NADF, North American Directory Forum.
A collection of service providers which plans to cooperatively offer a Public Directory Service in North America using the CCITT X.500 Recommendations.

NAI, Network Access Identifier.
This is the userID submitted by the client during PPP authentication.

nasreq, Network Access Server Requirements.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded July 2003.

nat, Network Address Translators.
IETF working group. Concluded February 2002.

NAT, Network Address Translator.
(RFC 2663) A method by which IP addresses are mapped from one realm to another, in an attempt to provide transparent routing to hosts. Traditionally, NAT devices are used to connect an isolated address realm with private unregistered addresses to an external realm with globally unique registered addresses.

NATP, Network Address and Port Translator.
A variant of NAT that can additionally translate address / port pairs.

NBN, National Bibliography Number.
(RFC 3188) A generic name referring to a group of identifier systems utilised by the national libraries and only by them for identification of deposited publications which lack an identifier, or to descriptive metadata (cataloging) that describes the resources.

nea, Network Endpoint Assessment.
IETF working group, Security area.

nemo, Network Mobility.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded November 2007.

netconf, Network Configuration.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

netdata, Network Database.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 1994.

netext, Network-Based Mobility Extensions.
IETF working group, Internet area.

netfax, Network Fax.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 1992.

netlmm, Network-based Localized Mobility Management.
IETF working group, Internet area.

netmod, NETCONF Data Modeling Language.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

netstat, Network Status Reports.
IETF working group. Concluded June 1996.

Network Layer.
Layer three of the OSI model. This layer is responsible for routing data between nodes.

newdom, New Top Level Domains.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1997.

newtrk, New IETF Standards Track Discussion.
IETF working group, General area. Concluded August 2006.

nfsv4, Network File System Version 4.
IETF working group, Transport area.

ngtrans, Next Generation Transition.
IETF working group. Concluded February 2003.

NIC, Network Information Center.
(RFC 1302) An organization whose goal is to provide informational, administrative, and procedural support, primarily to users of its network and, secondarily, to users of the greater Internet and to other service agencies.

NIC, Network Interface Card.
A hardware component attached to a device that provides network access. Each NIC has a unique permanent identification number.

nimrod, New Internet Routing and Addressing Architecture.
IETF working group, Routing area. Concluded March 1998.

Nimrod.
A routing system architecture designed to provide heterogeneous service specific routing in the Internet, while taking multiple constraints into account. Essentially, Nimrod is a link state routing protocol which supports path oriented packet forwarding. It uses the concept of maps to represent network connectivity and services at multiple levels of abstraction. Mechanisms are provided to allow restriction of the distribution of routing information.

nir, Networked Information Retrieval.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1994.

nisi, Network Information Services Infrastructure.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1995.

NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Organization. (RFC 1983) United States governmental body that provides assistance in developing standards. Formerly the National Bureau of Standards.

njm, Network Joint Management.
IETF working group. Concluded April 1994.

NMRG, Network Management Research Group Charter.
IRTF research group.

nntp, Network News Transport Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 1993.

nntpext, NNTP Extensions.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 2005.

NOC, Network Operations Center.
(RFC 1302) An organization whose goal is to oversee and maintain the daily operations of a network.

noctool2, NOC-Tool Catalogue Revisions.
IETF working group. Concluded June 1993.

noctools, NOC-Tools.
IETF working group. Concluded April 1990.

Node.
A device connected to a network.

nomcom, Operation of the IESG/IAB Nominating and Recall Committees.
IETF working group. Concluded July 2004.

notary, Notifications and Acknowledgements Requirements.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded November 1995.

noop, Network OSI Operations.
IETF working group, Operational Requirements area. Concluded April 1994.

npp, Network Printing Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded February 1994.

NREN, National Research and Education Network.
(RFC 1983) The NREN is the realization of an interconnected gigabit computer network devoted to Hign Performance Computing and Communications.

NSF, National Science Foundation.
Organization. (RFC 1983) A U.S. government agency whose purpose is to promote the advancement of science. NSF funds science researchers, scientific projects, and infrastructure to improve the quality of scientific research. The NSFNET, funded by NSF, was once an essential part of academic and research communications. It was a highspeed, hierarchical "network of networks." At the highest level, it had a backbone network of nodes, interconnected with T3 (45Mbps) facilities which spaned the continental United States. Attached to that were mid-level networks, and attached to the mid-levels were campus and local networks.

NSFNET, National Science Foundation Network.
Organization. The National Science Foundation sponsored the NSFNET wide area network government backbone that used to connect the Internet. This has been replaced with another commercial backbone.

nsis, Next Steps in Signaling WG.
IETF working group, Transport area.

NSIS, Next Steps in Signaling.

NSRG, NameSpace Research Group.
IRTF research group. Concluded November 2003.

ntp, Network Time Protocol.
IETF working group, Internet area.

NVFS, Network Virtual File System.
A file access model which defines a set of standardized commands and pathname conventions.

NVT, Network Virtual Terminal.
(RFC 854) An NVT is an imaginary device which provides a standard, network-wide, intermediate representation of a canonical terminal. This eliminates the need for "server" and "user" hosts to keep information about the characteristics of each other's terminals and terminal handling conventions. All hosts, both user and server, map their local device characteristics and conventions so as to appear to be dealing with an NVT over the network, and each can assume a similar mapping by the other party. The NVT is intended to strike a balance between being overly restricted (not providing hosts a rich enough vocabulary for mapping into their local character sets), and being overly inclusive (penalizing users with modest terminals).

The NVT is a bi-directional character device equipped with a printer and a keyboard. The printer responds to incoming data and the keyboard produces outgoing data which is sent over the connection and, if "echoes" are desired, to the NVT's printer as well. The code set is seven-bit USASCII in an eight-bit field, except as modified herein. Any code conversion and timing considerations are local problems and do not affect the NVT.


O

OASIS, Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards.
Organization. A non-profit, international consortium that creates interoperable industry specifications based on public standards such as XML and SGML, as well as others that are related to structured information processing.

oauth, Open Authentication Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area.

Octet.
An 8 bit value. Equivalent to a byte.

oda, Office Document Architecture.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 1993.

odv, Open Distance Vector IGP.
IETF working group. Concluded May 1990.

oim, OSI Internet Management.
IETF working group. Concluded April 1992.

OMA, Open Mobile Alliance.
Organization.

oncrpc, ONC Remote Procedure Call.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2001.

openpgp, An Open Specification for Pretty Good Privacy.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded April 2008.

OPES, Open Pluggable Edge Services.

[RFC 3835] An Architecture for Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES).

[RFC 3836] Requirements for Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES) Callout Protocols.

[RFC 3837] Security Threats and Risks for Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES).

[RFC 3838] Policy, Authorization, and Enforcement Requirements of the Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES).

[RFC 3897] Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES) Entities and End Points Communication.

[RFC 3914] Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES) Treatment of IAB Considerations.

[RFC 4037] Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES) Callout Protocol (OCP) Core.

[RFC 4236] HTTP Adaptation with Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES).

[RFC 4496] Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES) SMTP Use Cases.

opes, Open Pluggable Edge Services.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 2007.

opsawg, Operations and Management Area Working Group.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

opsec, Operational Security Capabilities for IP Network Infrastructure.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

opstat, Operational Statistics.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1995.

OSI, Open Systems Interconnection.
(RFC 1983) A suite of protocols, designed by ISO committees, to be the international standard computer network architecture.

OSI reference model.
ISO formulated the OSI model which consists of seven layers of specified protocol standards for network communications software. The OSI model has come to be the de facto organizational model for describing protocol stacks. The layers in the model are:

LayerDescription
7Application.
6Presentation.
5Session.
4Transport.
3Network.
2Data Link.
1Physical.

osids, OSI Directory Services.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded November 1994.

osigen, OSI General.
IETF working group, OSI integration area. Concluded June 1992.

osinsap, Assignment of OSI NSAP Addresses.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1991.

osix400, OSI X.400.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1991.

ospf, Open Shortest Path First IGP.
IETF working group, Routing area.

OTAF, Over-the-air Service Provisioning Function.
(RFC 2636) A configuration of network equipment that controls OTASP functionality and messaging protocol.

OTAPA, Over-the-air Parameter Administration.
(RFC 2636) Network initiated OTASP process of provisioning mobile station operational parameters over the air interface.

OTASP, Over-the-air Service Provisioning.
(RFC 2636) A process of provisioning mobile station operational parameters over the air interface.

otp, One Time Password Authentication.
IETF working group. Concluded October 2002.


P

P2P, Peer-to-Peer Research Group.
IRTF research group.

p2psip, Peer-to-Peer Session Initiation Protocol.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure Area.

Packet.
(RFC 1976) The basic unit of encapsulation, which is passed across the interface between the network layer and the data link layer. A packet is usually mapped to a frame; the exceptions are when data link layer fragmentation is being performed, or when multiple packets are incorporated into a single frame.

Packet switching.
(RFC 1983) A communications paradigm in which packets are individually routed between hosts, with no previously established communication path.

pana, Protocol for carrying Authentication for Network Access.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded December 2009.

pcc, Performance and Congestion Control.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded January 1991.

pce, Path Computation Element.
IETF working group, Routing area.

PCECP, Path Computation Element Communication Protocol.

[RFC 5376] Inter-AS Requirements for the Path Computation Element Communication Protocol (PCECP).

PCIM, Policy Core Information Model.

pcn, Congestion and Pre-Congestion Notification.
IETF working group, Transport area.

pdnrout, Private Data Network Routing.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1990.

PDU, Protocol Data Unit.
(RFC 1983) "PDU" is international standards committee speak for packet.

pem, Privacy-Enhanced Electronic Mail.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded February 1996.

PEM, Privacy Enhanced Mail.
(RFC 1983) Internet email which provides confidentiality, authentication and message integrity using various encryption methods.

Physical Layer.
Layer one of the OSI model. Defines the electrical and mechanical specifications of the transmission medium and the interface hardware. Additionally, it describes the method for how data is sent and received on the medium.

pier, Procedures for Internet/Enterprise Renumbering.
IETF working group. Concluded June 1998.

pilc, Performance Implications of Link Characteristics.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2004

pim, Protocol Independent Multicast.
IETF working group, Routing area.

pint, PSTN and Internet Internetworking.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded February 2001.

PINT, PSTN/Internet Interworking Service.
(RFC 3055) PINT services are an emerging set of new Internet based applications where voice (and fax) requests to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) are carried over the Internet.

pip, P. Internet Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1994.

pki4ipsec, Profiling Use of PKI in IPSEC.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded March 2007.

pkix, Public-Key Infrastructure (X.509).
IETF working group, Security area. This working group was established in the Fall of 1995 with the intent of developing Internet standards needed to support an X.509-based Public Key Iinfrastructure.

pktway, PacketWay.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1999.

pmol, Performance Metrics for Other Layers.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

pmtud, Path MTU Discovery.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded April 2007.

PNNI, Private Network-Network Interface.

Poison Reverse.
Algorithm. Also known as Split Horizon with Poisoned Reverse.

poised, Process for Organization of Internet Standards.
IETF working group, General area. Concluded April 1994.

poised95, Poised 95.
IETF working group, General area. Concluded March 1996.

poisson, Process for Organization of Internet Standards ONg.
IETF working group, General area. Concluded. The poised working group established the basis of the IETF process in its current form. poised95 established a base set of documents to describe the essentials of the IETF process. This working group was concerned with documenting issues relevant to the IETF process.

policy, Policy Framework.
IETF working group. Concluded November 2004.

pop, Post Office Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 1993.

Port.
An identifier associated with an endpoint service.

ppp, Point-to-Point Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded November 1989.

pppext, Point-to-Point Protocol Extensions.
IETF working group, Internet area. PPP is a mature protocol with a large number of subprotocols, encapsulations and other extensions. This group will actively advance PPP's most useful extensions to full standard, while defending against further enhancements of questionable value.

PPSP, Peer-to-Peer Streaming Protocol.
IETF working group, Transport area.

PPVPN, Provider-Provisioned VPN.
A VPN that is actively managed by the service provider rather than by the end customer.

[RFC 3809] Generic Requirements for Provider Provisioned Virtual Private Networks (PPVPN).

[RFC 4111] Security Framework for Provider-Provisioned Virtual Private Networks (PPVPNs).

ppvpn, Provider Provisioned Virtual Private Networks.
IETF working group. Concluded July 2003.

precis, Preparation and Comparison of Internationalized Strings.
IETF working group, Applications area.

Presentation Layer.
Layer six of the OSI model. This layer is responsible for data representation translation between nodes. Encryption and compression protocols are usually categorized here.

prim, Presence and Instant Messaging Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 2003.

printmib, Printer MIB.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 2000.

problem, Problem Statement.
IETF working group. Concluded October 2004.

Protocol.
(RFC 1983) A formal description of message formats and the rules that two computers must follow to exchange those messages. Protocols can describe low-level details of machine-to-machine interfaces (e.g., the order in which bits and bytes are sent across a wire) or high-level exchanges between allocation programs (e.g., the way in which two programs transfer a file across the Internet).

Protocol converter.
(RFC 1983) A device/program which translates between different protocols which serve similar functions (e.g. TCP and TP4).

Protocol stack.
(RFC 1983) A layered set of protocols which work together to provide a set of network functions.

provreg, Provisioning Registry Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 2004.

Proxy ARP.
(RFC 1983) The technique in which one machine, usually a router, answers ARP requests intended for another machine. By "faking" its identity, the router accepts responsibility for routing packets to the "real" destination. Proxy ARP allows a site to use a single IP address with two physical networks. Subnetting would normally be a better solution.

Proxy server.

psamp, Packet Sampling.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded August 2009.

PSN, Packet Switched Network.

PSTN, Public Switched Telephone Network.

ptomaine, Prefix Taxonomy Ongoing Measurement & Inter Network Experiment.
IETF working group. Concluded July 2004.

ptopomib, Physical Topology MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded October 2000.

PWE3, Pseudo Wire Emulation Edge-to-Edge.
A mechanism that emulates the essential attributes of a service such as ATM, Frame Relay or Ethernet over a Packet Switched Network (PSN). The required functions of PWs include encapsulating service-specific PDUs arriving at an ingress port, and carrying them across a path or tunnel, managing their timing and order, and any other operations required to emulate the behavior and characteristics of the service as faithfully as possible.

pwe3, Pseudo Wire Emulation Edge to Edge.
IETF working group, Internet area.


Q

Q.921.
ITU-T recommendation.

Q.931.
ITU-T recommendation.

QoS, Quality of Service.

qosr, QoS Routing.
IETF working group. Concluded April 1999.

quis, Quality Information Services.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded May 1995.


R

radext, RADIUS Extensions.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

Radio paging.

radius, Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service.
IETF working group. Concluded July 2000.

rap, Resource Allocation Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded June 2005.

rdbmsmib, Relational Database Management Systems MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded August, 1994

rddp, Remote Direct Data Placement.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded November 2007.

rdisc, Router Discovery.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded August 1991.

receipt, Receipt Notifications for Internet Mail.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 1998.

Repeater.
(RFC 1983) A device which propagates electrical signals from one cable to another.

rescap, Resource Capabilities Discovery.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 2003.

RFC, Request For Comments.
(RFC 1983) The document series, begun in 1969, which describes the Internet suite of protocols and related experiments. Not all RFCs describe Internet standards, but all Internet standards are written up as RFCs. The RFC series of documents is unusual in that the proposed protocols are forwarded by the Internet research and development community, acting on their own behalf, as opposed to the formally reviewed and standardized protocols that are promoted by organizations such as CCITT and ANSI.

RFC Editor.
Organization.

[RFC 5620] RFC Editor Model (Version 1).

rip, Routing Information Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded June 2003.

RIPE, Reseaux IP Europeens.
(RFC 1983) A collaboration between European networks which use the TCP/IP protocol suite.

RIPE-181.
(RFC 2650) A language used to register routing policies and configurations in the IRR.

RIPE-81.

ripv2, RIP Version II.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1995.

RMON.

[RFC 3273] Remote Network Monitoring Management Information Base for High Capacity Networks.

[RFC 4502] Remote Network Monitoring Management Information Base Version 2.

[RFC 2021] Remote Network Monitoring Management Information Base Version 2 using SMIv2.

rmonmib, Remote Network Monitoring.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded October 2006.

rmrg, Reliable Multicast Research Group.
IRTF research group. Concluded June 2003.

rmt, Reliable Multicast Transport.
IETF working group, Transport area.

RMT, Reliable Multicast Transport.

roamops, Roaming Operations.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2001.

rohc, Robust Header Compression.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded March 2010.

ROHC, RObust Header Compression.

rolc, Routing over Large Clouds.
IETF working group. Concluded May 1996.

roll, Routing Over Low power and Lossy networks.
IETF working group, Routing area.

ROSE, Remote Operations Service Element.

Route.
(RFC 1983) The path that network traffic takes from its source to its destination. Also, a possible path from a given host to another host or destination.

Router.
A node that forwards packets between physical links.

Routing.
(RFC 1983) The process of selecting the correct interface and next hop for a packet being forwarded.

Routing domain.
(RFC 1983) A set of routers exchanging routing information within an administrative domain.

RPF, Reverse Path Forwarding. Routing.
(RFC 1812) A method used to deduce the next hops for broadcast and multicast packets.

rps, Routing Policy System.
IETF working group. Concluded February 2000.

rpsec, Routing Protocol Security Requirements.
IETF working group, Routing area. Concluded March 2009.

RPSL, Routing Policy Specification Language.
(RFC 2280) RPSL allows a network operator to be able to specify routing policies at various levels in the Internet hierarchy; for example at the Autonomous System (AS) level. At the same time, policies can be specified with sufficient detail in RPSL so that low level router configurations can be generated from them. RPSL is extensible; new routing protocols and new protocol features can be introduced at any time. RPSL is a replacement for RIPE-181.

rreq, Router Requirements.
IETF working group. Concluded May 1995.

RRG, Routing Research Group.
IRTF research group.

RSA.
(RFC 1983) A public-key cryptographic system which may be used for encryption and authentication. It was invented in 1977 and named for its inventors: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman.

RSerPool, Reliable Server Pooling.
An architecture and set of protocols for the management and access to server pools supporting highly reliable applications and for client access mechanisms to a server pool. This document describes security threats to the RSerPool architecture and presents requirements for security to thwart these threats.

[RFC 5351] An Overview of Reliable Server Pooling Protocols.

[RFC 5354] Aggregate Server Access Protocol (ASAP) and Endpoint Handlespace Redundancy Protocol (ENRP) Parameters.

[RFC 5355] Threats Introduced by Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool) and Requirements for Security in Response to Threats.

[RFC 5356] Reliable Server Pooling Policies.

rserpool, Reliable Server Pooling.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded April 2009.

rsvp, Resource Reservation Setup Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded May 2001.

rtfm, Realtime Traffic Flow Measurement.
IETF working group. Concluded October 2000.

rtgwg, Routing Area Working Group.
IETF working group, Routing area.

RTT, Round-Trip Time.
(RFC 1983) A measure of the current delay on a network.

run, Responsible Use of the Network.
IETF working group.

rwhois, RWhois Operational Development.
IETF working group. Concluded September 1998.


S

sacred, Securely Available Credentials.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded February 2006.

samrg, Scalable Adaptive Multicast Research Group.
IRTF working group.

sasl, Simple Authentication and Security Layer.
IETF working group, Security area.

savi, Source Address Validation Improvements.
IETF working group, Internet area.

schema, Schema Registration.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded February 2000.

SDH, Synchronous Digital Hierarchy.
(RFC 1983) The European standard for high-speed data communications over fiber-optic media. The transmission rates range from 155.52Mbps to 2.5Gbps.

sdr, Source Demand Routing.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1998.

seamoby, Context Transfer, Handoff Candidate Discovery, and Dormant Mode Host Alerting.
IETF working group. Concluded October 2004.

SECG, Standards for Efficient Cryptography Group.
Organization.

secsh, Secure Shell.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded October 2006.

security.

send, Securing Neighbor Discovery.
IETF working group. Concluded August 2004.

Session Layer.
Layer five of the OSI model. This layer is responsible for establishing, synchronizing and maintaining communications channels between nodes.

SHDSL, Single-Pair High-Speed Digital Subscriber Line.

shim6, Site Multihoming by IPv6 Intermediation.
IETF working group, Internet area.

shr, Special Host Requirements.
IETF working group. Concluded April 1992.

sidr, Secure Inter-Domain Routing.
IETF working group, Routing area.

sieve, Sieve Mail Filtering Language.
IETF working group, Applications area.

SigComp, Signaling Compression.
Compression/decompression engine.

sigtran, Signaling Transport.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded March 2009.

simple, SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions.
IETF working group, Applications area.

sip, Session Initiation Protocol.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area. Concluded May 2009.

sipclf, SIP Common Log Format.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area.

sipcore, Session Initiation Protocol Core.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area.

sipp, Simple Internet Protocol Plus.
IETF working group, IP: Next Generation area. Concluded November 1994.

sipping, Session Initiation Proposal Investigation.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded May 2009.
This working group is chartered to document the use of SIP for several applications related to telephony and multimedia, and to develop requirements for any extensions to SIP needed for those applications. Such requirements will be referred to the SIP working group for development of any new SIP method or header.

siprec, SIP Recording.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area.

SIREN, Searchable Internet Resource Names.
IRTF research group. Concluded April 2004.

skinstak, OSI Upper-Layer Communications for Applications.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1993.

smds, IP Over Switched Megabit Data Service.
IETF working group. Concluded December 1990.

SMDS, Switched Multimegabit Data Service.
(RFC 1983) An emerging high-speed datagram-based public data network service developed by Bellcore and expected to be widely used by telephone companies as the basis for their data networks.

sming, Next Generation Structure of Management Information.
IETF working group. Concluded April 2003.

smime, S/MIME Mail Security.
IETF working group, Security area.

SMRG, Services Management Research Group.
IRTF research group. Concluded October 2004.

smtpext, Internet Mail Extensions.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 1993.

SNA, Systems Network Architecture.
(RFC 1983) A proprietary networking architecture used by IBM and IBM-compatible mainframe computers.

snadlc, SNA DLC Services MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded April 2001.

snanau, SNA NAU Services MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded June 1999.

snmp, Simple Network Management Protocol.
IETF working group, Network Management area. Concluded November 1991.

snmp-ng, SNMP - Next Generation.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1997.

snmpauth, SNMP Authentication.
IETF working group, Network Management area. Concluded December 1990.

snmpconf, Configuration Management with SNMP.
IETF working group. Concluded March 2005.

snmpsec, SNMP Security.
IETF working group. Concluded May 1993.

snmpv2, SNMP Version 2.
IETF working group. Concluded December 1995.

snmpv3, SNMP Version 3.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area. Concluded September 2003.

soc, SIP Overload Control.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area.

softwire, Softwires.
IETF working group, Internet area.

SOHO, Small Office, Home Office.

SOIF, Summary Object Interchange Format.
(RFC 2655) A machine-readable syntax for transmitting structured summary objects, currently used primarily in the context of the World Wide Web. Query referral has often been dismissed as an ineffective strategy for handling searches of Web resources, and Web resources certainly present challenges not present in structured directory services like Rwhois. In situations where a keyword-based free text search is desired, query referral is not likely to be effective because the query will probably be routed to every server participating in the referral mesh. Where a search can be limited by reference to a specific resource attribute, however, query referral is an effective tool. SOIF can be used to create such a known-attribute query mesh because it provides a method for associating attributes with net- addressable resources. SOIF was first defined by the Harvest project in January 1994. SOIF was derived from a combination of the Internet Anonymous FTP Archives IETF Working Group (IAFA) templates and the BibTeX bibliography format. The combination was originally noted for its advantages of providing a convenient and intuitive way for delimiting objects within a stream, and setting apart the URL for easy object access or invocation, while still preserving compatibility with IAFA templates.

SONET, Synchronous Optical Network.
(RFC 1983) An international standard for high-speed data communications over fiber-optic media. The transmission rates range from 51.84Mbps to 2.5Gbps. ANSI T1.105.

Spam.
(RFC 2635) The term "spam" as it is used to denote mass unsolicited mailings or netnews postings is derived from a Monty Python sketch set in a movie/tv studio cafeteria. During that sketch, the word "spam" takes over each item offered on the menu until the entire dialogue consists of nothing but "spam spam spam spam spam spam and spam." This so closely resembles what happens when mass unsolicited mail and posts take over mailing lists and netnews groups that the term has been pushed into common usage in the Internet community.

Sparse mode.
Routing. (RFC 1812) A network layer multicast datagram is forwarded as a data link layer multicast frame to routers and hosts that have asked for it. The initial forwarding state is the inverse of dense-mode in that it assumes no part of the network wants the data.

speechsc, Speech Services Control.
IETF working group, Transport area.

speermint, Session PEERing for Multimedia INTerconnect.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure Area.

spirits, Service in the PSTN/IN Requesting InTernet Service.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded May 2005.

SPIRITS, Services in PSTN requesting Internet Services.

spki, Simple Public Key Infrastructure.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded February 2001.

SPKI.
Electronic Certificates.

SPKM, Simple Public-Key GSS-API Mechanism.

Split horizon.
Algorithm. (RFC 1058) A scheme for avoiding problems caused by including routes in updates sent to the gateway from which they were learned. The "simple split horizon" scheme omits routes learned from one neighbor in updates sent to that neighbor. "Split horizon with poisoned reverse" includes such routes in updates, but sets their metrics to infinity.

spwg, Internet Security Policy.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1991.

SRP, Secure Remote Password.

ssh, Site Security Handbook.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1999.

ssm, Source-Specific Multicast.

ssm, Source-Specific Multicast.
IETF working group, Routing area. Concluded February 2007.

st2, Internet Stream Protocol V2.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1996.

stdguide, Guide for Internet Standards Writers.
IETF working group. Concluded July 1998.

stime, Secure Network Time Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded February 2005.

storm, STORage Maintenance.
IETF working group, Transport area.

Streaming Media.
(RFC 2354) A non-interactive unidirectional transmission, in the style of a radio or television broadcast.

Stub network.
(RFC 1983) A stub network only carries packets to and from local hosts. Even if it has paths to more than one other network, it does not carry traffic for other networks.

svrloc, Service Location Protocol.
IETF working group. Concluded May 2001.

syslog, Security Issues in Network Event Logging.
IETF working group, Security area.


T

T.140

T1.
(RFC 1983) A term for a digital carrier facility used to transmit a DS-1 formatted digital signal at 1.544 megabits per second or 24 channels with 64 Kbps that can transmit voice, text and pictures. A sub or fractional T-1 is part of the channels that can be leased.

T1.105.
SONET.

T3.
(RFC 1983) A term for a digital carrier facility used to transmit a DS-3 formatted digital signal at 44.746 megabits per second.

TALI, Transport Adapter Layer Interface.

tcpimpl, TCP Implementation.
IETF working group, Transport area. Concluded October 2000.

tcplw, TCP Large Windows.
IETF working group. Concluded April 1998.

tcpm, TCP Maintenance and Minor Extensions.
IETF working group, Transport area.

tcpsat, TCP Over Satellite.
IETF working group. Concluded February 2000.

TDM, Time Division Multiplexed.

TELENET.
(RFC 1983) The original name for SprintNet. It should not be confused with the Telnet protocol or application program.

telex.

telnet, telnet.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded November 1994.

Terminal emulator.
(RFC 1983) A program that allows a computer to emulate a terminal. The workstation thus appears as a terminal to the remote host.

Terminal server.
(RFC 1983) A device which connects many terminals to a LAN through one network connection. A terminal server can also connect many network users to its asynchronous ports for dial-out capabilities and printer access.

TERENA, Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association. Organization.
(RFC 1983) TERENA was formed in October 1994 by the merger of RARE and EARN to promote and participate in the development of a high quality international information and telecommunications infrastructure for the benefit of research and education.

TESLA, Timed Efficient Stream Loss-Tolerant Authentication.

tewg, Internet Traffic Engineering.
IETF working group. Concluded January 2005.

tftpexts, TFTP Extensions.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 1995.

thinosi, Minimal OSI Upper-Layers.
IETF working group. Concluded October 1994.

tictoc, Timing over IP Connection and Transfer of Clock.
IETF working group, Internet area.
The focus of this working group is on highly accurate time and frequency distribution over
native IP and MPLS-enabled IP packet switched networks.

tip, Transaction Internet Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 1998.

TIPHON.
An XML based protocol, carried by HTTP, which handles accounting and authorization requests and responses.

TISDAG, Technical Infrastructure for Swedish Directory Access Gateways.

tls, Transport Layer Security.
IETF working group, Security area.

tn3270e, Telnet TN3270 Enhancements.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded February 2004.

tnfs, Trusted Network File Systems.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1996.

Token Ring.
A network topology specified by IEEE 802.5.

Topology.
The physical arrangement of links and their associated devices that define a network.

tpix, TP/IX.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1994.

trade, Internet Open Trading Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded February 2005.

Traffic.
The quantity of data transferred by a network.

trainmat, Network Training Materials.
IETF working group. Concluded October 1996.

Transit network.
(RFC 1983) A transit network passes traffic between networks in addition to carrying traffic for its own hosts. It must have paths to at least two other networks.

transmib, Transmission Mib.
IETF working group. Concluded December 1990.

Transparent router.
Also known as an address sharing router. The hosts on the LAN behind such a router share the address space of the WAN in front of the router.

Transport Layer.
Layer four of the OSI model. This layer is responsible for reliable data transmission between nodes.

Traversal Extension.
(RFC 2356) A Traversal Extension is an explicit notification that there are one or more traversal points (firewalls, fireridges, etc) between the mobile node and its home agent. Negotiating access past these systems may imply a new authentication header, and possibly a new encapsulating header (perhaps as part of tunnel-mode ESP) whose IP destination address is the traversal address.

Triggered update.

trill, Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links.
IETF working group, Internet area.

trmon, Token Ring Remote Monitoring.
IETF working group. Concluded September 1993.

trojan horse.
An application that masquerades as another application.

trunkmib, DS1/DS3 MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1999.

TSAG, Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group.
Organization.

tsvwg, Transport Area Working Group.
IETF working group, Transport area.
The Transport area receives occasional proposals for the development and publication of RFCs dealing with Transport topics, but for which the required work does not rise to the level where a new working group is justified, yet the topic does not fit with an existing working group, and a single BOF would not provide the time to ensure a mature proposal. This group will serve as the forum for developing these types of proposals.

tuba, TCP/UDP Over CLNP-Addressed Networks.
IETF working group. Concluded May 1995.

TUBA, TCP/UDP over Bigger Addresses.

TULIP, TCP and UDP over Lightweight IP.

TUNIC, TCP and UDP over a Nonexistent IP Connection.

Tunnelling.
(RFC 1983) The encapsulation of protocol A within protocol B, such that A treats B as though it were a datalink layer. Tunneling is used to get data between administrative domains (networks) which use a protocol that is not supported by the internet connecting those domains.


U

ucp, User Connectivity.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1994.

UDDI, Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration.
An XML based registry system.

udlr, UniDirectional Link Routing.
IETF working group. Concluded December 2003.

UMTS, Universal Mobile Telecommunication Service.

Unicast.
(RFC 1983) An address which only one host will recognize.

UNINETT PCA, UNINETT Policy Certification Authority.
Organization.

Unit.
(RFC 2354) A timed interval of media data, typically derived from the workings of the media coder. A packet comprises one or more units, encapsulated for transmission over the network. For example, many audio coders operate on 20ms units, which are typically combined to produce 40ms or 80ms packets for transmission. The framework of RTP is assumed. This implies that packets have a sequence number and timestamp. The sequence number denotes the order in which packets are transmitted, and is used to detect losses. The timestamp is used to determine the playout order of units. Most loss recovery schemes rely on units being sent out of order, so an application must use the RTP timestamp to schedule playout.

UPnP, Universal Plug and Play.

upsmib, Uninterruptible Power Supply.
IETF working group. Concluded April 1999.

URA, Uniform Resource Agent.

urc, Uniform Resource Characteristic.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded January 1997.

uri, Uniform Resource Identifiers.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded July 1995.

URI, Uniform Resource Identifier.
A strng representation of a resource namespace.

URL, Uniform Resource Locator.
(RFC 1983) A string representation for a resource available on the Internet. URLs are primarily used to retrieve information using WWW.

urlreg, Uniform Resource Locator Registration Procedures.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded November 1999.

urn, Uniform Resource Names.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 2002.
The goal of this working group is to define both a Uniform Resource Name (URN) framework and an initial set of components that fit this framework. The output of this Working Group will comply with RFC 1737, which defines URNs and gives requirements for them. The framework will define the mechanics for enabling global scope, persistence, and legacy support requirements of URNs; requirements for namespaces to support this structure will also be defined. Although the framework will allow URNs to be defined that vary in terms of degree of scalability and persistance, ensuring "user friendliness" of all resultant identifiers is beyond the scope of this group. This WG will define the framework for URNs, at least one resolution registry system, and at least one namespace.

URN, Uniform Resource Name.
Uniform Resource Names are resource identifiers with the specific requirements for enabling location independent identification of a resource, as well as longevity of reference. URNs are part of the larger URI family with the specific goal of providing persistent naming of resources.
URN namespaces.

[RFC 3862] Common Presence and Instant Messaging (CPIM): Message Format.

[RFC 3863] Presence Information Data Format (PIDF).

[RFC 4479] A Data Model for Presence.

usefor, Usenet Article Standard Update.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 2009.

USENET.

userdoc, User Documents.
IETF working group. Concluded March 1990.

userdoc2, User Documents Revisions.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1994.

userglos, Internet User Glossary.
IETF working group. Concluded August 1996.

uswg, User Services.
IETF working group. Concluded October 2002.

UTC, Universal Coordinated Time.
A time scale that couples Greenwich Mean Time, which is based solely on the Earth's inconsistent rotation rate, with highly accurate atomic time. When atomic time and Earth time approach a one second difference, a leap second is calculated into UTC. Both UTC and Greenwich Mean Time are set at 0 degrees longitude on the prime meridian.


V

v6ops, IPv6 Operations.
IETF working group, Operations and Management area.

vBNS, very high-speed Backbone Network Service.
An experimental nation-wide area network backbone subsidized by the NSF.

vcarddav, vCard and vCardDAV.
IETF working group, Applications area.

VDSL, Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Lines.
A DSL variant that provides up to 26 Mb/s over distances up to 50 meters. VDSL can also be configured in symmetric mode.

[RFC 4069] Definitions of Managed Object Extensions for Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Lines (VDSL) Using Single Carrier Modulation (SCM) Line Coding.

[RFC 4070] Definitions of Managed Object Extensions for Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Lines (VDSL) Using Multiple Carrier Modulation (MCM) Line Coding.

VENUS, Very Extensive Non-Unicast Service.

VERONICA, Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives.
(RFC 2151) Developed at the University of Nevada at Reno as an archie-like adjunct to Gopher. As the number of Gopher sites quickly grew after its introduction, it became increasingly harder to find information in gopherspace since Gopher was designed to search a single database at a time. VERONICA maintains an index of titles of Gopher items and performs a keyword search on all of the Gopher sites that it has knowledge of and access to, obviating the need for the user to perform a menu-by-menu, site-by-site search for information. When a user selects an item from the menu of a VERONICA search, "sessions" are automatically established with the appropriate Gopher servers, and a list of data items is returned to the originating Gopher client in the form of a Gopher menu so that the user can access the files. VERONICA is available as an option on many Gopher servers.

VFIP, VOICE FILE INTERCHANGE PROTOCOL.

VNRG, Virtual Networks Research Group.
IRTF research group.

vpim, Voice Profile for Internet Mail.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded April 2005.

vgmib, 100VG-AnyLAN MIB.
IETF working group. Concluded January 1998.

Virtual circuit.
(RFC 1983) A network service which provides connection-oriented service without necessarily doing circuit-switching.

virus.
An unsolicited and possibly malicious program. These programs are commonly transmitted via email attachments and often replicate themselves to other machines.

VPN, Virtual Private Network.
(RFC 4026) VPN is a generic term that covers the use of public or private networks to create groups of users that are separated from other network users and that may communicate among them as if they were on a private network.

vrrp, Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol.
IETF working group, Routing area.

vwrap, Virtual World Region Agent Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area.


W

WAIS, Wide Area Information Servers.
(RFC 1983) A distributed information service which offers simple natural language input, indexed searching for fast retrieval, and a "relevance feedback" mechanism which allows the results of initial searches to influence future searches. Public domain implementations are available.

WAN, Wide Area Network
A network that spans a wide geographic area.

webdav, WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 2007.

webi, Web Intermediaries.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded June 2002.

weird, Web Elucidation of Internet-Related Developments.
IETF working group. Concluded February 2001.

WG, Working Group.
(RFC 1983) A working group, within the IETF, is a group of people who work under a charter to achieve a certain goal. That goal may be the creation of an Informational document, the creation of a protocol specification, or the resolution of problems in the Internet. Most working groups have a finite lifetime. That is, once a working group has achieved its goal, it disbands. There is no official membership for a working group. Unofficially, a working group member is somebody who is on that working group's mailing list; however, anyone may attend a working group meeting.

wg-msg, Mail and Messaging.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded January 1997.

whip, Internet White Pages Requirements.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded June 1995.

widex, Widget Description Exchange Service.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded July 2007.

Winsock.

Wireless Device Configuration.

wnils, Whois and Network Information Lookup Service.
IETF working group. Concluded February 1996.

worm.
A program that replicates itself over a network.

wrec, Web Replication and Caching.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded March 2001.

wts, Web Transaction Security.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded July 2001.

WWW, World Wide Web.


X

x25mib, X.25 Management Information Base.
IETF working group. Concluded May 1993.

x400ops, X.400 Operations.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded June 1994.

xcon, Centralized Conferencing.
IETF working group, Transport area.

xmldsig, XML Digital Signatures.
IETF working group, Security area. Concluded.

xmpp, Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol.
IETF working group, Applications area. Concluded October 2004.

xmpp, Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol.
IETF working group, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure area.


Y

yam, Yet Another Mail.
IETF working group, Applications area.


Z

zeroconf, Zero Configuration Networking.
IETF working group, Internet area. Concluded September 2004.

Zigbee.


RFCs:

[RFC 1208] A Glossary of Networking Terms.

[RFC 1983] Internet Users' Glossary.


Publications:


Obsolete RFCs:

[RFC 1392] Internet Users' Glossary.


RFCs Publications Obsolete RFCs