Netgear FWG114P FWG114P Reference Manual - Page 271

Reference Manual for the ProSafe Wireless 802.11g Firewall/Print Server Model FWG114P Certificate Authority A Certificate Authority is a trusted third-party organization or company that issues digital certificates used to create digital signatures and public-private key pairs. The role of the CA in this process is to guarantee that the individual granted the unique certificate is, in fact, who he or she claims to be. Usually, this means that the CA has an arrangement with a financial institution, such as a credit card company, which provides it with information to confirm an individual's claimed identity. CAs are a critical component in data security and electronic commerce because they guarantee that the two parties exchanging information are really who they claim to be. DHCP An Ethernet protocol specifying how a centralized DHCP server can assign network configuration information to multiple DHCP clients. The assigned information includes IP addresses, DNS addresses, and gateway (router) addresses. DMZ Specifying a Default DMZ Server allows you to set up a computer or server that is available to anyone on the Internet for services that you have not defined. There are security issues with doing this, so only do this if you are willing to risk open access. DNS Short for Domain Name System (or Service), an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Because domain names are alphabetic, they are easier to remember. The Internet however, is really based on IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name, therefore, a DNS service must translate the name into the corresponding IP address. For example, the domain name www.example.com might translate to 198.105.232.4. The DNS system is, in fact, its own network. If one DNS server does not know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one, and so on, until the correct IP address is returned. Domain Name A descriptive name for an address or group of addresses on the Internet. Domain names are of the form of a registered entity name plus one of a number of predefined top level suffixes, such as .com, .edu, .uk, and so on. For example, in the address mail.NETGEAR.com, mail is a server name and NETGEAR.com is the domain. DSL Short for digital subscriber line, but is commonly used in reference to the asymmetric version of this technology (ADSL) that allows data to be sent over existing copper telephone lines at data rates of from 1.5 to 9 Mbps when receiving data (known as the downstream rate) and from 16 to 640 Kbps when sending data (known as the upstream rate). ADSL requires a special ADSL modem. ADSL is growing in popularity as more areas around the world gain access. Glossary 3 March 2004, 202-10027-01