Category Archives: Glossary

Introduction to Bridging and Switching

Bridges and switches operate principally at Layer 2 of the OSI reference model. As such, they are widely referred to as data-link layer devices. Bridges became commercially available in the early 1980s. At the time of their introduction, bridges connected and enabled packet forwarding between homogeneous networks. More recently, bridging between different networks also has been defined and… Read More »

MTOOLS

Mtools is a public domain collection of tools to allow Unix systems to manipulate MS-DOS files: read, write, and move around files on an MS-DOS filesystem

Open Systems Interconnection(OSI) Model

The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model began as a reference model, but has since been implemented. It was created by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to provide a logical framework for how data communication processes should interact across networks. Standards were created for the computer industry allowing different networks to work together efficiently.

What is Routing?

Routing is the process by which an item gets from one location to another. Many items get routed: for example, mail, telephone calls, and trains. In networking, a router is the device used to route traffic. The routing information a router learns from its routing sources is placed in its routing table. The router will rely on this… Read More »

A Brief History of Unix

To understand why the UNIX operating system has so many commands and why it’s not only the premier multi-user, multitasking operating system, but also the most successful and the most powerful multichoice system for computers, you’ll have to travel back in time. You’ll need to learn where UNIX was designed, what were the goals of the original programmers,… Read More »

IFCONFIG

Stand for InterFace CONFIGurator – display your ip address, network interfaces, transferred and received data information, configure a network interface.

LN

Make links between files, by default, it makes hard links; with the ‘-s’ option, it makes symbolic (or “soft”) links.

DIG

A flexible tool for interrogating DNS name servers. It performs DNS lookups and displays the answers that are returned from the name server(s) that were queried. Most DNS administrators use dig to troubleshoot DNS problems because of its flexibility, ease of use and clarity of output. Other lookup tools tend to have less functionality than dig.