Cabletron Systems 9A000 manual Glossary

GLOSSARY

FT-PNNI (ForeThought PNNI) - a FORE Systems routing and signalling pro- tocol that uses private ATM (NSAP) addresses; a precursor to ATM Forum PNNI (see PNNI).

ftp (File Transfer Protocol) - a TCP/IP protocol that lets a user on one com- puter access, and transfer data to and from, another computer over a net- work. ftp is usually the name of the program the user invokes to accomplish this task.

GCRA (Generic Cell Rate Algorithm) - an algorithm which is employed in traffic policing and is part of the user/network service contract. The GCRA is a scheduling algorithm which ensures that cells are marked as conforming when they arrive when expected or later than expected and non-conformingwhen they arrive sooner than expected.

GFC (Generic Flow Control) - the first four bits of the first byte in an ATM cell header. Used to control the flow of traffic across the User-to-Network Interface (UNI), and thus into the network. Exact mechanisms for flow control are still under investigation and no explicit definition for this field exists at this time. (This field is used only at the UNI; for NNI-NNI use (between net- work nodes), these four bits provide additional network address capacity, and are appended to the VPI field.)

GIO - a proprietary bus architecture used in certain Silicon Graphics, Inc. workstations.

Header - protocol control information located at the beginning of a protocol data unit.

HEC (Header Error Control) - a CRC code located in the last byte of an ATM cell header that is used for checking cell integrity only.

HIPPI (High Performance Parallel Interface) - an ANSI standard that extends the computer bus over fairly short distances at speeds of 800 and 1600 Mbps.

HPUX - the Hewlett-Packard version of UNIX.

HSSI (High-Speed Serial Interface) - a serial communications connection that operates at speeds of up to 1.544 Mbps.

Hub - a device that connects to several other devices, usually in a star topology.

I/O Module - FORE’s interface cards for the LAX-20 LAN Access Switch, designed to connect Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI LANs to ForeRunner ATM networks.

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