Glossary¶

BIOS

A set of computer instructions in firmware that control input and output operations.

CLI

Command Line Interface

Domain Specific Language

A special purpose programming language dedicated to a particular problem area, e.g. SQL is a domain specific language for retrieval of data from a database.

EPEL

Common acronym for Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux. These are typically included in Fedora Linux, and provided for RedHat, CentOS, and other RPM-based distributions. The project’s homepage is here: FedoraProject:EPEL.

GUI

Pronounced “gooey”, this is an acronym for a Graphical User Interface. This is distinctly different from a CLI, in that the GUI typically can contain more complex visual interactions. Read more here: Wikipedia:GUI.

MAC

Pronounced as “mack” and often used as a noun referring to a network device’s Media Access Controller (MAC) address. A MAC address is a globally unique number assigned to each interface in an Ethernet network and used to direct Ethernet frames between source and destination devices.

OSI

Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) is an effort to develop standards-based computer networking protocols in order to allow networking equipment from different vendors to interoperate without relying on implementation of competing proprietary protocols. The OSI is best known for the development of the standard seven-layer OSI model for describing layers of abstraction into which the various networking protocols are categorized.

POSIX

An acronym for “Portable Operating System Interface”, is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines the application programming interface (API), along with command line shells and utility interfaces, for software compatibility with variants of Unix and other operating systems. Read more here: Wikipedia:POSIX.

RFC

The RFC documents (Request for Comments) are a series of Internet standards, best common practices, and related documents describing how networked computers communicate. This document series provides the standards for how the Internet and many other related technologies interrelate and interoperate.

VLAN

An acronym for “Virtual Local Area Network”; a single physical switch can be divided into multiple “virtual” switches via the configuration of VLANs, and assigning individual switchports into a given VLAN. Each VLAN represents a Ethernet broadcast domain (boundary); best practices dictate that a single IP (Layer 3) network be mapped to a single VLAN. Packets must be routed between VLANs (either by an outboard router, or by an internal router in what is known as a “Layer 3 switch.”)