N

Glossary

network protocols

The E5810 supports these network protocols: ARP, DHCP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, ICMP, and RPC.

ARP: Short for Address Resolution Protocol, a TCP/IP protocol used to convert an IP address into a physical address (called a DLC address), such as an Ethernet address.

DHCP: See DHCP

DNS: See DNS

FTP: Abbreviation of File Transfer Protocol, the protocol used on the Internet for sending files.

HTTP: Short for HyperText Transfer Protocol, the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands.

ICMP: Short for Internet Control Message Protocol, an extension to the Internet Protocol (IP) defined by RFC 792. ICMP supports packets containing error, control, and informational messages. The PING command, for example, uses ICMP to test an Internet connection.

RPC: Abbreviation of remote procedure call, a type of protocol that allows a program on one computer to execute a program on a server computer. Using RPC, a system developer need not develop specific procedures for the server. The client program sends a message to the server with appropriate arguments and the server returns a message containing the results of the program executed.

P

proxy server

A server that sits between a client application, such as a Web browser, and a real server. It intercepts all requests to the real server to see if it can fulfill the requests itself. If not, it forwards the request to the real server. Proxy servers have two main purposes:

Improve Performance: Proxy servers can dramatically improve performance for groups of users, since a proxy server saves the results of all requests for a certain amount of time. Consider the case where both user X and user Y access the Web through a proxy server. First user X requests a certain Web page, which we will call Page 1. Sometime later, user Y requests the same page.

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