Josh References Glossary 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
  1. 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.
  2. (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).