Technical data

208 Agilent Connectivity Guide
8 Glossary
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.
Instead of forwarding the request to the Web server where Page 1
resides, which can be a time-consuming operation, the proxy server
returns the Page 1 it already fetched for user X. Since the proxy
server is often on the same network as the user, this is a much faster
operation. Real proxy servers support hundreds or thousands of
users.
Filter requests: Proxy servers can also be used to filter requests. For
example, a company might use a proxy server to prevent its
employees from accessing a specific set of Web sites.
refresh
In Connection Expert, the action that invokes the discovery
mechanism for detecting interfaces and instruments connected to
your computer. The explorer view is then refreshed to show the
current, discovered state of your test system.
register
An address location that contains a value that represents the state of
hardware, or that can be written into to cause hardware to perform a
specified action or to enter a specified state.
router
A device that connects any number of LANs. Routers use headers
and a forwarding table to determine where packets go. They use
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) to communicate with