Lucent Technologies PortMaster - Manual (Page 317)

Glossary
Glossary-7
committed information rate
See CIR.
community
A label that identifies a group of BGP destinations for the purpose of policy enforcement.
Assembling destinations into identifiable “communities” lets BGP peers base policy
decisions on the identity of the group rather than on individual destinations. The
community identifier, which consists either of one 32-bit value or two 16-bit values, is
advertised in update messages between BGP peers.
community string
A character string assigned to a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agent to
restrict read and write access to the SNMP variables.
ComOS
The operating system for PortMaster communications servers, routers, and access servers.
confederation
In BGP, an autonomous system that has been subdivided into smaller autonomous
systems called confederation member autonomous systems. (CMASs). A confederation
appears like a single autonomous system to other autonomous systems and is recognized
only by other confederation members. Subdivision of an autonomous system into a
confederation changes the peer relationships of confederation members in different
CMASs from internal to external. Use of confederations in an autonomous system
requires that all routers in the autonomous system belong to a CMAS; however, the
policies used by BGP peers can change across confederation boundaries.
Confederations are one method for avoiding the overhead of having all peers within an
autonomous system fully communicate to—be fully meshed with—each other. Route
reflection clusters provide an easier method, but require the use of identical policies on all
peers within the autonomous system. See also route reflection.
confederation member
Any router running BGP and recognizing that its autonomous system is subdivided into
smaller autonomous systems called confederation member autonomous systems. (CMASs).
The CMASs are recognized only by confederation members and not by peers external to
the confederation. Subdivision of an autonomous system into a confederation changes
the peer relationships of confederation members in different CMASs from internal to
external.