Web Caching

List of Acronyms

I’ve used many acronyms throughout this book, in some cases without explanation. This glossary provides brief descriptions for acronyms only. Although the definitions aren’t very detailed, they should be enough to get you started in the right direction on your search for more information.

A

ACK

An acknowledgment packet in TCP, used to guarantee delivery and for connection establishment.

AFS

The Andrew Filesystem. A distributed/network filesystem similar to NFS.

ARP

Address Resolution Protocol. Used to find out the layer two (Ethernet) address associated with an IP address.

ASP

Active Server Pages. A technique for dynamically generating HTML pages, developed by Microsoft and similar to CGI.

ATM

Asynchronous Transfer Mode. A layer two data transmission protocol, typically used on high-speed fiber links.

B

BIND

Berkeley Internet Name Daemon. The de facto standard DNS server and client library software package. For more information, visit http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/.

C

CARP

Cache Array Routing Protocol. A technique for distributing requests to an array of caching proxies.

CDA

Communications Decency Act. A U.S. law passed in 1996 intended to criminalize the transmission of pornography. Largely struck down as unconstitutional in 1997.

CDF

Cumulative Distribution Function. A certain way of presenting probability distribution data.

CDN

Content Distribution Network. A service, available from companies such as Akamai and Digital Island, that replicates origin server content at different ...