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Re: draft of email security glossary for review

2004-12-30 22:09:20

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, John A. Martin wrote:

"wayne" == wayne 
"Re: draft of email security glossary for review"
 Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:36:07 -0600

    wayne> I will add another thing:

    wayne> Host: A computer attached to the internet.  A host may have
    wayne> one or more names.  A host may also have one or more
    wayne> interfaces (IP address), although hosts with more than one
    wayne> interface is also often called a gateway.

Maybe s/gateway/router/ or perhaps s/gateway/router or a gateway/

If you follow OSI model for network architecture, then:
 Hub corresponds to device doing retransmission on L1 layer 
 Switch corresponds to device doing retransmission on L2 layer
 Router corresponds to device doing retransmission on L3 layer
 Proxy (??) is device doing retranssmission on L4 and possibly L5 layer
  - Since I've never dealt with true L6 protocol (people seem to say that TLS
    is L5), I have not got a clue what to call device retransmitting on L6 :)
 Gateway is device doing retransmission on L7 (i.e. SMTP gateway)

The glossary's definition for HOST specifies it as device connected to
two or more ip networks, so it can do retransmission on any layer above L2,
that means it can be router, proxy or a gateway :). I'll note however that
not everyone would accept proxy as standing for retransmission of L4 
protocol (this would be TCP or UDP), so in fact the suggestion of just
adding router is appropriate and I've modified the glossary to say:

HOST   A computer attached to the Internet. A host may have one or more 
dns names (hostnames) and may have one or more ip addresses. Hosts with 
more than one interface and ip addresses in different networks can 
function as a router or a gateway.

Thanks for your suggestion.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william(_at_)elan(_dot_)net