IPv6 Network Administration

Glossary

This glossary is intended as a quick reference for terms you may be unfamiliar with. More complete descriptions of the most entries can be found by consulting the index.

3G

Shorthand for Third Generation mobile services.

3GPP

3rd Generation Partnership Project, a group set up to work on standards for third generation mobile telecommunications.

6bone

The original test network for IPv6 consisting of sites joined by tunnels. The 6bone is now beginning its retirement, due for completion by 06/06/2006.

ACL

An Access Control List is a way of specifying who can access a particular file, network or service. Different vendors and different software all have their own way to specify ACLs.

anycast

A way of sending a packet so that it is destined to any one of a group of machines. Compare this with multicast.

API

An Application Programming Interface is a standard set of data structures, functions and methods made available to programmer to allow access to some facility, such as a network protocol or a windowing interface.

APNIC

The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre is the RIR for the part of the world you'd guess it would be.

ARIN

The American Registry for Internet Numbers is the RIR for North America and some other countries in the Caribbean and Africa.

ARP

The Address Resolution Protocol, used by IPv4 to translate IPv4 addresses into lower layer addresses, such as Ethernet MAC addresses.

AS

Autonomous Systems are routing black boxes out of which a BGP network is built. Within an AS, routing will ...