OIDs identify individual entries, or objects, within the MIB. OIDs are specified using an “x,y” naming convention, defined by Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1). In this naming convention, “x” is a numeric value identifying an OID’s position within the MIB tree and “y” is a human-readable OID name, also called a variable name. The numerical OIDs […]

The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard was jointly developed by Visa and MasterCard in December 2004, to simplify compliance for merchants and payment processors. The PCI standard has 6 core areas and 12 requirements, covering a broad scope of best practices for perimeter security, data privacy, and layered security.

Policy enforcement describes the categorization, management, and monitoring of a specific set of goals and requirements for an enterprise network, ideally from a centralized point of control.

When connecting with a server, the client can ask for confirmation that the information was received by setting the ACK flag, or it can force the server to process the information in the packet by setting the PUSH flag. Both requests require the server to do more work than with other types of requests.

Quality of Service (QoS) measures the consistency with which certain standards of IP packet and data services are met. Dependable, high-quality service is a key concern of network administrators for critical applications and protocols. As applications and devices use more and more bandwidth, QoS becomes more important as a tool to guarantee a known level of […]

A load balancer is a device that acts as a reverse proxy and distributes network or application traffic across a number of servers. Load balancers are used to increase capacity (concurrent users) and reliability of applications. They improve the overall performance of applications by decreasing the burden on servers associated with managing and maintaining application […]

The Management Information Base is a database containing Object Identifier (OID) information. Depicted as a hierarchical structure, the MIB is the “tree” and each individual object is a “leaf,” identified by an OID. Levels within the MIB are assigned by different organizations. The top-level MIB OIDs belong to various standards organizations, while lower-level OIDs belong to various […]

A NAS (network-attached storage) device is a server dedicated to file sharing that connSects to an IP network. NAS devices communicate with client systems using NFS (network file system) and/or CIFS (common Internet file systiem).

Network availability is a key concern for enterprises that run multiple data centers. It is critical for disaster planning, but it is also a consideration for everyday operations, so that users accessing application servers achieve the best connections and performance possible.

Network traffic management, also known as application traffic management, refers to a methodology that F5 pioneered for intercepting, inspecting, and translating network traffic, directing it to the optimum resource based on specific business policies. This allows network administrators to apply availability, scalability, security, and performance standards to any IP-based application, significantly increasing overall network application performance.