P
- packet
- A quantum unit of network data. A packet's contents are generally
a header portion (with content and routing information) and a data
portion (with the actual data).
- partition
- A portion of a disk.
- Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister (PERL)
- A programming scripting language used heavily in systems
administration and web programming with the Common
Gateway Interface (CGI).
- payload
- The 48-byte data portion of an ATM
cell.
- PBX
- See Private Branch eXchange (PBX).
- PC
- See personal computer (PC).
- PDC
- See Primary Domain Controller (PDC).
- PERL
- See Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister (PERL).
- Permanent Virtual Circuit (PVC)
- A virtual circuit in an ATM network that is
always up when the switch is up. Used for signalling and routing
information.
- personal computer (PC)
- A machine compatible with the 8088/80x86 Intel microprocessor family.
A machine capable of emulating the 8088/80x86 Intel microprocessor (such
as the NEXTSTEP application SoftPC).
- PGP
- See Pretty Good Privacy (PGP).
- PID
- See process ID (PID).
- Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS)
- Normal twisted-pair telephone service (dial tone).
- platter
- A single piece of magnetic or magnetic/optical media on which data
is stored. Multiple platters make up a disk. See also
cylinder, track.
- Point of Presence (POP)
- A location on the network where a vendor has a collection of
equipment, such as routers (to the Internet) or a dial-up modem
pool.
- Point to Point Protocol (PPP)
- The successor
protocol (RFC 1661) to SLIP; PPP
provides a point-to-point connection between individual entities
using either a synchronous or an asynchronous data link. One of
its primary features is the ability for one side to configure
the IP address of the other side.
- policy
- A rule that an administrator places on the system,
providing a way for an administrator to customize applications to
organization-specific needs; policies are rules that govern the
management of resources.
- (Security.) A long-term, broad strategy,
with detail on interpretation and implementation.
- policy region
- Associates specific policies with instances of policy-driven object
types in order to enforce the application of these policies to managed
resources; a policy region is a collection of TME
resources that are governed by a common set of
policies.
- policy-driven object
- An object for which
policies have been defined and whose behavior
is determined by those policies.
- POP
- See Point of Presence (POP) and
Post Office Protocol (POP).
- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX)
- A standard operating system interface that allows both Berkeley-based
and AT&T-based Unix systems to share a common system call interface.
- POSIX
- See Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX).
- Post Office Protocol (POP)
- A protocol (a precursor to Internet Mail
Access Protocol (IMAP)) that defines how a client should fetch mail from and return
mail to a mail server. Defined in
RFC 937 (v2)
and in RFC 1939
(v3).
- POTS
- See Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS).
- PPP
- See Point to Point Protocol (PPP).
- prefix
- The network-specific portion of a CIDR
address. The prefix identifies the network routing information, such
as the network address or subnet information.
- Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
- A public key/private key encryption scheme used to digitally sign
messages, encrypt files, of both.
- primary
- A DNS server with local files; like an
NIS master
server.
- Primary Domain Controller (PDC)
- A Windows NT server containing the master copy of the account
database for a domain. Changes are written to the PDC before being
replicated to the Backup Domain Controllers
(BDC) in the domain.
- principal
- The name of a service, administrator or user registered in a
security database such as Kerberos,
in order to give that name various access privileges.
- principle
- (Security.) High-level fundamentals.
- Private Branch eXchange (PBX)
- A telephone switch local to and belonging to an organization other
than a carrier. See also Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN).
- privilege
- The level of security required to access an
object.
- procedure
- (Security.) Details on how to achieve various highly-sensitive
tasks.
- process ID (PID)
- The unique identifier for a process in the system process table.
- profile
- Configuration information that describes a certain capability or
setup; a prototype for configuration information or properties that
are common to a group of machines or that apply to an application.
- protection domain
- Describes the bounds of an operation and the data that needs to be
serialized or protected from other threads of execution.
- protocol
- The control information used to establish a procedure for
transmitting data between peer entities; protocols describe the
form in which data will be transmitted, the method to keep sending
and receiving units synchronized, and how the data will be checked
for errors.
- prune
- Remove unnecessary or unused branches from a
multicast router
(mrouter) network
when no sites on those branches are part of a
multipoint call.
- PSTN
- See Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).
- pterabyte
- The amount of old, ancient, moldy, dinosaur-era data that people
keep online for no good reason whatsoever.
- PTR record
- See DNS record types, PTR record.
- Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)
- The network of telephone switches and other hardware belonging
to a telephone company.
- PVC
- See Permanent Virtual Circuit (PVC).