Technical data

IETF
Internet Engineering Task Force. A large international community of network
designers, operators, vendors and researchers concerned with the evolution of the
Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. Membership is
open to everyone. See the
http://www.ietf.org/
web site for more information.
IGP
See Interior Gateway Protocol.
IMAP
The Internet Message Access Protocol. IMAP enables clients to access email
messages and folders from an IMAP server and synchronize them locally. This
enables a client to organize email messages and folders without continuous access
to the server.
inetd
A UNIX internet daemon. A server process listens for client requests for specific
services. When
inetd
receives a request for a service, it starts the appropriate
server process.
initial sequence number
The first sequence number used for sending or receiving on a connection.
inode
A UNIX file structure used to address a file block. There is a unique inode allocated
for each active file with a name made up of a device/i-number pair.
interface
The boundary between two parts of a system across which communication can
occur; may be defined through hardware or software.
The host address of an attached network interface. This is the address of a
broadcast, nbma, or loopback interface, and the remote address of a point-to-point
interface. As with any host address, it can be specified symbolically.
The connection between a router and one of its attached networks. A physical
interface can be specified by a single IP address, domain name, or interface name
(unless the network is an unnumbered point-to-point network). Multiple levels of
reference in the configuration language allow the identification of interfaces by
using wildcard, interface type name, or delete word address. Be careful using
interface names because future versions might allow more than one address per
interface. Dynamic interfaces can be added or deleted and indicated as up or down
as well as changes to address, netmask, and metric parameters.
Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP)
The protocol used to propagate network reachability and routing information
within an autonomous system; RIP is among the most popular.
One of a class of routing protocols used to exchange routing information within
an autonomous system.
interface list
A list of one or more interface names, including wildcard names (names without
a number) and names that may specify more than one interface or address, or
the token all-for-all interfaces.
intermediate system
An OSI system that performs Internet layer forwarding. A routing system receives
data packets from a system on one subnet and passes them on to a system on
another subnet; it receives data packets from a source end system, or from the
Glossary–21