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NETS topics that start with "P"

P/F

Pass/Fail3

PA

Port Adapter

PABX

Private Automatic Branch eXchange

PacificWave

Pacific Wave

Pacific Wave is a joint project between the CENIC and the PNWGP, and is operated in collaboration with the University of Southern California and the University of Washington.

packet

The unit of data sent across a packet switching network. The term is used loosely. While some Internet literature uses it to refer specifically to data sent across a physical network, other literature views the Internet as a packet switching network and describes IP datagrams as packets.

PacketFence

PacketFence is a free and open source network access control (NAC) solution.

PacketRail

A fiber company in Western Colorado. As of 2010-08, Fort Lewis College is negotiating with PacketRail to connect FLC in Durango to UNM in Albuquerque, so that FLC can get to to Denver via UNM and WRN.

PACUR

President's Advisory Committee on University Relations, part of UCAR.

PAD

Packet Assembler/Disassembler

PAGE

Program for the Advancement of Geosciences Education

PAgP

Port Aggregation Protocol, a Cisco protocol used to manage etherchannels.

PAIX

Peering And Internet eXchange, used to be the Palo Alto Internet Exchange

PAM

1. Pluggable Authentication Modules - a software library that does authentication. NETS usus PAM on servers to enable use of one-time-passwords for login, ssh, etc.
2. Port Adapter Modules (Cisco)
3. Port to Application Mapping
4. Project Accounting Manager
5. Pulse Amplitude Modulation

PAN

Personal Area Network

Panasus

Panasus is a company that makes storage products. STAR uses Panasus equipment.

pancho

A software package that NETS once used to grab configs from switches. We now use a Python script that David Mitchell wrote named nndtftp.py. David has a cron job that runs the script 4 times a day to get configs. nndtftp.py gets the list of switches from Django. It writes the configs to netserver:/tftpboot/pancho-configs, a file path which still contains the name "pancho" because pancho used to write to the directory.

PAP

Password Authentication Protocol

PAR

Project Authorization Request

PAT

Port Address Translation

PBB

Packet Burst Broadband

PBB-TE

Provider Backbone Bridge Traffic Engineering

PBNM

Policy-Based Network Management

PBR

Policy-Based Routing

PBX

Private Branch eXchange

PC

1. President's Council
2. Personal Computer

PCA

Personal Communications Assistant

pcap

packet capture file format produced by tcpdump and wireshark

PCI

1. Peripheral Component Interconnect, a standard bus used in PCs to allow connecting peripheral cards, like modems.
2. Protocol Control Information

PCM

1. Parallel Climate Model
2. Pulse Code Modulation

PCMDI

Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, part of Lawrence Livermore National Labs

PCR

Peak Cell Rate

PD

Power Down

PDF

Portable Document Format

PDIO

Planning, Design, Implementation, Operation

PDLM

Protocol Description Language Module

PDM

Power Distribution Module in a Juniper router

PDQ

Position Description Questionnaire, used by UCAR when hiring new staff

PDU

1. Power Distribution Unit
2. Protocol Data Unit, a type of network data packet

PE

Provider Equipment, an MPLS term

PEM

Power Entry Module, on a Juniper device

PerfClub

perfSONAR users group conference call, third Monday of ecah month, call 866-528-2256, Participant Code 4775829. See TLPW PerfClub.

perfSONAR

Performance-focused Service Oriented Network monitoring ARchitecture, a software suite maintained by Internet2. NETS runs a machine dedicated to running the perfSONAR software suite. See the NETS perfSONAR notes or the NETS Installing configuring, and using perfSONAR software, or access the machine's perfSONAR web interface

perfSONAR-BUOY

perfSONAR-BUOY is the part of the perfSONAR software suite that runs automated tests and saves the results in a database. It's called "buoy" because its function is like a sonobuoy that the Navy uses to locate submarines - it sends out pings and record the results.

Periscope

A Django application for viewing and caching PerfSONAR data

PERT

Program Evaluation and Review Technique

PESC

Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council

PF

penthouse (5th floor of Mesa Lab tower A)

PFC

Policy Feature Card, a daughtercard that mounts on Supervisor 720 modules in Cisco Catalyst switches. The PFC accelerates layer 2 and 3 switching and routing. In Sup 720 modules, PFC and MSFC cards are not optional.

PFE

Packet Forwarding Engine on a Juniper router or switch. The PFE is in the fowarding plane, versus the Routing Engine which is on the control plane of the device.

PFP

Pandemic Flu Plan

PGP

Pretty Good Privacy. See PGP for UCAR Sysadmins

PHB

Per-Hop Behavior, a term used in differentiated services (DiffServ) or multiprotocol label switching (MPLS). It defines the policy and priority applied to a packet when traversing a router.

phonedir

phonedir.txt

netserver:/usr/web/nets/internal/ucar-directories/phondir.txt, also known and the "white pages". David Mitchell runs a cron job daily on netserver to fetch the file. The cron job runs /usr/home/mitchell/CVS/scripts/whitepages.py, which gets the file from the People DB and formats it as text.

PHP

1. Penultimate Hop Popping, an MPLS term.
2. Personal Home Page, later redifined as HyperText Preprocessor, a scripting language for web development to produce dynamic web pages

physical address

See MAC-level address.

PI

Principal Investigator

PIC

Physical Interface Card (Juniper)

PICA

Partner Initiated Customer Access, a Cisco program that allows qualified Cisco Partners to selectively entitle their customers to have registered use of Cisco.com.

Pidgin

Pidgin is an Internet Messaging client for Windows. IN NETS, at least Marl a and Paul use it. There are notes about using it on the NETS IM Client Configuration Wiki page.

PIM

Protocol Independent Multicast, a routing architecture that allows the addition of IP multicast routing on existing IP networks.

ping

Packet internet groper. A program used to test reachability of destinations by sending an ICMP echo request and waiting for a reply. The term is used as a verb: "Ping host X to see if it is up!". The Cisco IOS ping command returns one character codes for each ping, shown in the following table:

Character	Description
!	Success! Received a reply.
.	Timeout while waiting for a reply.
U	A destination unreachable error PDU was received.
Q	Source quench (destination too busy).
M	Could not fragment.
?	Unknown packet type.
&	Packet lifetime exceeded.

PING-GRAPH

A Nagios service that records ping RTTs so that they can be graphed. Note: If the PING-GRAPH alarms fail with "Time-to-Live exceeded in transit", it means the value of the "-l" option on the check_icmp in the Nagios commands.cfg file needs to be raised.

PKCS

Public Key Cryptography Standard

PKI

Public Key Infrastructure

PL Mont

Physical Layer properties Monitoring, a name for a page found the Web Console interface to ADVA devices

PLCP

Physical Layer Convergence Procedure

PLMN

Public Land Mobile Net

PM

1. Performance Monitoring point, a location in an ADVA (Movaz) device where a value (such as a light intensity) can be accessed for diagnostic purposes. PMs have names like OPR (Optical Power Received), LBC (Laser Bias Current) and LT (Laser Temperature)
2. Project Manager, in CenturyLink-speak

PMD

Polarization Mode Dispersion, an optical networking term

PMEL

Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (NOAA)

PMO

Project Management Office, part of UCAR F&A

PMTU

PMTUD

Path MTU Discovery

PNNL

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

PNWGP

Pacific Northwest GigaPop

PO

Purchase Order.

POC

Point Of Contact

POD

Person of the Day, a term WSST uses for the WSST staffpersen who is responible for being available to handle problems

PoE

Power over Ethernet. Statistics about the number of ports providing POE on the UCAR network can be found on the Port Lists POE page.

PON

Passive Optical Network, a way for an ISP to provide fiber to the home.

POP

1. Point of Presence
2. Post Office Protocol, a protocol for email retrieval. POP is an alternative to IMAP.

port

The abstraction used by Internet transport protocols to distinguish among multiple simultaneous connections to a single destination host.

POS

Packet Over SONET

POST

Power On Self Test

POTS

Plain Old Telephone Service

PowerHub

The name of a type of hub manufactured by Alantec. Alantec PowerHubs were once used at NCAR.

POWR

POWeR outage call list, a phone list used when a major power or network outage prevents sending of UCAR status messages to users via email.

POWRENT

Power Entry card, a type of module in a ADVA/Movaz device

PPC

Power Per Channel. In ADVA documentation, light intensity measured in dBm.

PPK

Public Private Key

PPML

Public Policy Mailing List, used for discussions of ARIN policies.

PPP

Point-to-Point Protocol, the successor to SLIP. PPP provides router-to-router and host-to-network connections over both synchronous and asynchronous circuits.

PPS

1. Packets Per Second
2. Physical Plant Services, part of UCAR

PPTP

Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol

PQ

Priority Queuing

PR

1. Purchase Requisition
2. PacketRail, a fiber company in Colorado

PRCS

Project Revision Control System. See the PRCS section of the Netserver Administration page.

PRI

Primary Rate Interface

ProCurve

ProCurve is HP's name for a line of Ethernet switches. The Akamais server cluster at the FRGP uses HP ProCurve switches to interconnect Unix servers.

project

projects

NETS Projects Wiki page

PROM

Programmable Read-Only Memory

protected hosts and networks

See the CSAC Network security definitions

protocol

A formal description of message formats and the rules two computers must follow to exchange those messages. Protocols can describe low-level details of machine-to-machine interfaces (e.g., the order in which bits and bytes are sent across a wire) or high-level exchanges between programs (e.g., the way in which two programs transfer a file). Some protocols are IP, IPX, DECnet, AppleTalk, EtherTalk, SNMP, SMTP.

provision

provisioning

ADVA documentation says

Defining equipment and the facilities that they support is called provisioning.

Pete thinks it's a synonym for configuring.

Proxim

The company that makes the Proxim/Tsunami radio units (ml-330-wm1-wb.ucar.edu and fl3-3068-wm1-wb.ucar.edu) that UCAR uses to connect the Mesa Lab and Foothills Lab sites. The link backs up fiber that connects ML and FL.

Proxsafe

Proxsafe makes key lockboxes that can be menitored. NETS stores physical keys in Proxsafe lockboxes. See http://netserver/nets/internal/inventory/lockboxes/index.shtml.

proxy

The mechanism whereby one system "fronts for" another system in responding to protocol requests.

proxy ARP

The technique in which one machine, usually a router, answers ARP requests intended for another machine. By "faking" its identity, the router accepts responsibility for routing packets to the "real" destination.

PRPA

Platte River Power Authority

PS

1. perfSONAR
2. Purchased Services

PSAP

Public Safety Answering Point

PSC

Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center, one of 4 supercomputing centers funded by the NSF.

PSI

Performance Systems International, Inc. PSI wrote the network monitoring software once used by NCAR

PSK

Pre-Shared Key, usually refers to a password shared with attendees at a confererce to allow them to get temporary access to a wireless network.

PSL

Presbyterian/St. Lukes hospital, a for-profit institution that is part of CTN, that CTN is not supposed to advertise to the UPoP

PSN

1. Product Support Notification. Juniper issues these to tell customers about support issues.
2. Packet-Switched Network

pSPT

perfSONAR Performance Toolkit

PSTN

Public Switched Telephone Network

PT-MISM

SFP/XFP Port MISMatch. One of several alarm types that may be reported by a "show alarm" command on an ADVA RayExpress optical switch. The PT-MISM alarm is raised when a replaced device does not share the capabilities of the original device, or the alarm is raised when the data rate of a device will not support the service provisioned for that port. This alarm can happen because you are using a non-ADVA SFP or XFP. It's non-service-affecting, but you may want to clear the alarm by issuing a "initiate inventory sfp xxx" command (remember that the command will reboot the shelf processor, so you'll lose connectivity for 45 seconds or so, without affecting traffic).

PTCM

PCM/CSM Transition Model

PTO

Personal Time Off

PTR

PTR is a type of record used in DNS configurations to implement reverse lookups (looking up DNS names by IP address). PTR records are defined in RFC 1035.

PU

Power Up

putty

putty is a telnet client for Windows.

PV

photovoltaic, a.k.a. solar cells

PVC

Permanent Virtual Circuit. A term used in ATM and Frame Relay networks to specify a permanent (exists whether data is flowing or not) connection between two entities on a network.

PVHS

Poudre Valley Health System

PVM

Parallel Virtual Machine

PVP

Permanent Virtual Path

PVRST

Per-VLAN Rapid Spanning Tree, a Cisco proprietary protocol. Also known an RPVST+ or PVRST+.

PVST

Per VLAN Spanning Tree, a Cisco proprietary protocol that improved on STP, but only works with Cisco ISL. Later, Cisco came out with PVST+, which works over 802.1q.

PXF

Parallel Express Forwarding (Cisco)