Glossary

3DES

3DES – Triple Data Encryption Algorithm is an improvement of DES as it is a symmetric-key block cipher as it chains three instances of DES with different keys.

3GPP

3rd generation Partnership Project – The joint standardization partnership responsible for telecommunication standard development.

5GC

5G Core Network – the core network specified for 5G by 3GPP. It is specified as in the Reference Point Architecture or as Service Based Architecture.

5G Core Network – a Short Overview

5G Core Network Functions

5GPPP

5G Public Private Partnership – Partnership initiated by the EU Commission and industry manufacturers, telecommunications operators, service providers, SMEs and researchers to develop 5G network.

Towards 5G – New 5G-PPP Projects Kick-off (5G PPP Phase2)

AAA

Authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) – network security services provide primary frameworks through which sets up access control on the router or access server.

Radius AAA Configuration

AAS

Active Antenna System – is an advanced BS platform which uses the active antennas to optimize structure, cost, and performance features.

ACL

Access Control List – access control lists gives permission and also prevents unauthorized traffic from entering or exiting a network.

Access List example (Cisco)

AES

Advanced Encryption Standard is a symmetric block cipher used by the U.S. government to protect classified information and it is implemented in software and hardware globally to encrypt sensitive data.

AH

Authentication Header is a protocol that is part of the Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) and it checks the integrity and verifes the packet.

AP

Access Point- is a hardware networking devices that uses  wireless connection when connecting to an network.

ARP

Address Resolution Protocol  a protocol used by the Internet Protocol (IP) to map IP network addresses to the hardware addresses used by a data link protocol. The protocol operates below the network layer as a part of the interface between the OSI network and OSI link layer.

Proxy ARP – Cisco ASA and Anyconnect

ARQ

Automatic Repeat Request – scheme whereby the receiving terminal requests retransmission of packets which are detected to be erroneous.

BGP

Border Gateway Protocol – a protocol that is used to manage packets routes across the internet by exchanging routes and reachability information between routers.

BGP: Aggregate address

BS

Base Station – A piece of equipment that facilitates wireless communication between user equipment and a network

CN

Core Network – central part of a telecommunications network that provides various services to customers who are connected by the access network (e.g. LTE CN is called EPC, and 5G CN is called 5GC)

5G Core Network – a Short Overview

D2D

Device to Device – direct communication between two mobile users without participation of the core netwrok or base station.

DH Group

Diffie-Hellman Group – allows two devices establish a shared secret by exchanging cryptographic keysover an unsecure network.

DHCP

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol – a network protocol that is used in assigning an IP address to a computer configured in a network by the DHCP server.

DHCP Configuration (Cisco)

DMRS

Demodulation Reference Signal – Signal in uplink transmission is used for channel estimation and for coherent demodulation which comes along with PUSCH and PUCCH.

DPI

Deep Packet Inspection checks the data part of a packet as it passes an inspection point, and aslo searches for protocol non-compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions, or defined criteria to decide whether the packet  if it is to be routed to a different destination.

Overview of Next Generation Firewall Security Products – Medium Scale Enterprise

DTP

Dynamic Trunk Protocol is a proprietary networking protocol developed by Cisco Systems for the purpose of negotiating trunking encapsulation between endpoint devices of a link.

E-UTRA

Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access – an evolution of the 3G UMTS radio-access technology towards a high-data-rate, low-latency and packet-optimized radio-access technology

EIGRP

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) – an enhanced distance vector protocol that uses Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL) for shortest path calculation.

EIGRP: 1. Basic configuration

eLAA

enhanced License Assisted Access – the improved version of the operating of the LTE in the unlicensed spectrum.

LTE-Advanced Pro and Unlicensed Spectrum

eNB

evolved Node B – The base station in LTE systems.

ESP

Encapsulating Security Payload is a protocol within the IPSec that supports configurations of encryption and aunthentication only which is also not provided for the packet header.

etsi

european telecommunication standrad institute – standardization organization in the telecommunication industry in Europe.

FDD

Frequency Division Duplex – a way to organize radio access, where the transmitter and receiver operate at different carrier frequencies.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol- network protocolthat is used between the client and the sever for file transfers.

GLBP

Gateway Load Balancing Protocol – one of the NHRP kind protocols that protects traffic from a router or circuit failure.

NHRP: GLBP config (Cisco)

gNB

Next Generation NodeB – Base station in 5G New Radio systems.

HA

High Availability- refers to whereby a system is able to function and to operate continuously for a long time without having problems.

Overview of Next Generation Firewall Security Products – Medium Scale Enterprise

HARQ

Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request – the simultaneous combination of Automatic Retransmission reQuest (ARQ) and Forward Error Correction (FEC).

HSRP

Hot Standby Router Protocol is a routing protocol that is used as backup in the event of router failure. The protocol is mainly applied in multi-access, multicast or broadcast capable LAN.

HTTP HTTP HTTP

eMTC (aka LTE Cat-M, while in fact, CAT-M is just a definition of UE type/category supporting eMTC) is a low power wide area (LPWA) wireless technology developed by the 3GPP to address the growing need for a solution to address the requirements for IoT applications and Machine-Type Communication (MTC) in terms of cost and power consumption reduction without any significant change to the current LTE deployment.

HTTPS

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) communication protocol in which data being transmitted between web server and browser is encrypted and it is secure.

Overview of Next Generation Firewall Security Products – Medium Scale Enterprise

ICMP

Internet Control Message Protocol is a protocol used by routers for error reporting and providing information on the system functional operations.

IKE

Internet Key Exchange (IKE) is a protocol which can be used in the security for virtual private networks’ (VPNs) during negotiations and accessing of the network to random hosts.

IKEv2

Internet Key Exchange (IKE) version 2 is an improvement of IKE but it has improvements such as denial of service attack, fewer cryptographic methods and standard mobilty support e.t.c.

IoT

Internet of Things – the inter-networking of physical devices, vehicles, buildings, and other items which enable these objects to collect and exchange data.

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) Overview – Post from Grandmetric Advisor

IP

Internet Protocol – is used when communication is to be send and receive between  computers over the Internet networks, local area networks (LAN) and enterprise networks.

Allow only telnet to device (Cisco)

IP SLA

Internet Protocol Service Level Agreement Monitor – active monitoring feature which allows to determine connectivity by checking IP destination availability or measuring specific parameters of the network along the given path.

IP SLA config and static route tracking

IPsec

IP Security is a combination of protocols that make the Internet Protocol such as the use of encryption and securing VPN (Virtual Private network)between communication nodes.

DMVPN Phase 1 Single Hub – IPSec example

ISAKMP

ISAKMP is a protocol that negotiates between two hosts on the building of the Ipsec after the IKE has aunthecated the keys by separating the negotiations into two phases: Phase one which creates the first tunnel, which protects later ISAKMP negotiation messages and Phase two which creates the tunnel that protects data.

ISE

Cisco Identity Services Engine is a network administration software which enables that is used when enforcing created security and access policies for devices connected to the organization’s routers and switches.

Cisco ISE: 3. Adding ISE to deployment

ITU

International Telecommunication Union – agency of the United Nations responsible for information and communication technologies.

Iu

Iu – the interface between Radio Network Controller and Core Network.

LAA

License Assisted Access – operation of the LTE system in the unlicensed spectrum using licensed LTE anchor.

LTE-Advanced Pro and Unlicensed Spectrum

LACP

Link Aggregation Control Protocol IEEE 802.3ad (LACP) is an open standard of Ethernet link aggregation. LACP allows Cisco switches to manage Ethernet channels between switches that conform the 802.3ad protocol.

LACP configuration (Huawei)

LAN

Local Area Network – connects the computer hardware in a localized area such as an office or home. LANs implements the use of wired connections to link the computers to each other and to a variety of peripheral devices such as printers.

LLDP

Link Layer Discovery Protocol a neighbor discovery protocol that is used by devices to advertise information about themselves to other devices on the network.

LLDP configuration (Cisco)

LTE

Long Term Evolution – a standard for high-speed wireless communication for mobile phones and data terminals

LTE Advanced

Mobile communiction standard, enhancement of the LTE system.

LTE Advanced Pro

Mobile communiction standard, further evolution of the LTE Advanced system.

LTE-Advanced Pro – what is this?

MAC

Medium Access Control – A sub-layer of radio interface layer 2 providing unacknowledged data transfer service on logical channels and access to transport channels.

MBMS

Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service – point-to-multipoint interface specification for cellular networks, designed to provide efficient delivery of broadcast and multicast services.

MIMO

Muliple Input Multiple Output – a system with multiple transsmitting and receiving antennas.

mmWave

milimetre Wave – the wave of extremely high frequency in the spectrum from 30 to 300 GHZ.

5G trends – buzzwords reviewed

MST

Multiple Spanning Tree – reduces the number of spanning tree instances to by letting you assign two or more vlans to a spanning tree instance, thus reducing CPU cycles needed to calculate STP for each VLAN separately.

NAS

Non-Access Stratum

NAT

Network Address Translation modifies network address by remapping one IP address space into another in Internet Protocol (IP) datagram packet headers while they are in transit across a traffic routing device.

Static floating routing (Cisco)

NB

Node B – A logical node responsible for radio transmission / reception in one or more cells to/from the User Equipment.

NB-IoT

Narrowband Internet of Things – radio technology standard developed to enable a wide range of devices and services to be connected using cellular telecommunications bands.

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) Overview – Post from Grandmetric Advisor

NG-RAN

Next Generation Radio Access Network – the Radio Access Network specified for 5G system by 3GPP. It is composed of 5G NR and evolved LTE nodes.

NGFW

Next Generation Firewall is an improvement of the traditional firewall but with the NGFW it applies enhanced methodologies such as in-line deep packet inspection (DPI) and intrusion prevention system (IPS).

Overview of Next Generation Firewall Security Products – Medium Scale Enterprise

NHRP

NHRP is an ARP-like protocol that reduce NBMA network problems. NHRP is used to improve the computer traffic being routed over NBMA networks.

NHRP: GLBP config (Cisco)

NR

New Radio – the 5G air interface as specified by 3GPP. It is based on OFDMA and as of Rel-15 is defined to work in the frequencies from 450MHz to 52.6GHz.

NTP

Network Time Protocol is able to synchronize the time of day between time servers and clients which are distributed so that the events can correlate when receiving system logs and other time-specific events from multiple network devices.

Network Time Protocol (Cisco)

OSI

Open Systems Interconnection is reference model composed of seven layers, whereby each layers specifies functions in the network and it describes how information is transmitted and received from a software application in one computer moves through a network medium to a another computer.

OSPF

Open Shortest Path First is a routing protocol used in the Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It used to calculate the shortest and best path of the packet in inter-connected networks.

Where to use static and where to use dynamic routing?

PAGP

Port Aggregation Protocol – a protocol which is used for the automated, logical aggregation of Ethernet switch ports known as Ether Channel.

PAgP configuration (Cisco)

PAT

Port Address Translation is a type of network address translation. PAT is used when translating the same ip of the LAN, but with a different port number assignment. PAT is also known as overloading, port-level multiplexed NAT.

PBR

Policy Based Routing – offers the possibility to forward traffic based on defined criteria without verifying the IP routing table. The constructed policy is applied to interface.

PBR: Local Policy Base Routing (Cisco)

PCCH

Paging Control Channel – a downlink channel that transfers paging information.

PDCCH

Physical Downlink Control Channel – channel that carries between others the downlink allocation information, uplink allocation grants for the terminal.

PDCP

Packet Data Convergence Protocol.

PKI

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) – enables the communication between two users to have a secure communication by providing cryptographic keys. SDN- Software defined networking uses open protocols, such as OpenFlow, to apply several kinds of network technology aimed at making the network as agile and flexible as the virtualized server and storage infrastructure of the modern data.

PSK

Pre- Shared Key, enables one to use the command-line interface to store plain text passwords securely format in NVRAM). The passowrds are of type 6 format encryption thus it is difficult to see the real passowrd though one is able to see the encrypted password and retrieve them but difficult to decrypt.

PUSCH

Physical Uplink Shared Channel – The channel used to carry uplink RRC signalling messages, UCI and application data.

QAM

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation – modulation scheme of the amplitude of two separate carrier waves, exactly 90 degrees out of phase with each other.

QoS

Quality of Service – The measurement of the overall performance of a service seen by the users of the network.

Radio Access Network

RAN – part of a mobile telecommunication system which implements a radio access technology.

RAT

Radio Access Technology – underlying physical connection method for a radio based communication network.

RIP

Routing Information Protocol enables the network information exchange between the routing devices.

RIP: Basic config

RIPv2

Routing Information Protocol Version 2 is a routing protocol that includes the subnet mask with the network addresses in its routing updates and distance vector routing protocol as defined in RFC 1723.

DMVPN Phase 3 Single Hub – OSPF – Spoke example

RLC

Radio Link control – layer 2 protocol used in UMTS and LTE on the air interface.

RNC

Radio Network Controller – governing element in the radio access network responsible for controlling the nodes.

RRC

Radio Resource Control – A sublayer of radio interface Layer 3, responsible for controlling the configuration of radio interface Layers 1 and 2.

RSA

RSA is a standard used to encrypt message or data over the internet. It uses two different keys whereby one is public and the other is private.

RSTP

Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol RSTP works as an improvement of the STP by reducing loopbacks in a network. RSTPhas three port states which are discarding, learning, and forwarding.

SA

Security Association is the connection between two devices for sharing data,thus it implements IPSec for the connection to be secure.

SD-WAN

Software Defined Wide Area Network, SDWAN or SD-WAN is an application of one of the Software Defined Network (SDN) paradigm called data plane, control plane and management plane dissagregation. SD-WAN builds the communication overlay on the underying network regardless of its type like MPLS, radio links or DSL. SD-WAN simplifies maintenance process as whole WAN infrastructure can be monitored and modified from single pane of glass. Example of SD-WAN is Cisco Viptela – you can read more on our blog

Cisco Viptela SD-WAN components and connectivity (Part-1)

SDA

(Software Defined Access) is a framework of automatic and dynamic management of multiple network elements and the technology separates the control and the data-forwarding functions of network equipment, and centralizes the control functions of multiple network elements.

SDN

Software Defined Networking – the concept from computer/IP networks to decouple the Control-Plane (decision of where the traffic is sent) from User-Plane (actually forwarding the traffic) enabling efficient and separate optimization of each Plane.

What is Software Defined Network (SDN)?

SNMP

Simple Network Management Protocol – used by network administrators when they are monitoring the network devices.  SNMP trap messages are sent to the server by the devices which monitors and analyze state of interfaces, routing protocols events and CPU or memory.

SNMP configuration example

SON

Self Organizing Network – a network that is designed in such way, that planning, configuration, management, optimization and healing can be done austomatically.

Self-Organizing Networks – current features and evolution

SSH

Secure Shell (SSH) – a networkprotocol used for concealing network services securely over an unsecure network.

Allow only SSH to device (Cisco)

SSL

Secure Socket Layer is used when the webserver and the browser want to connect the link is encrypted thus ensuring data privacy.

Overview of Next Generation Firewall Security Products – Medium Scale Enterprise

STP

Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is a Layer 2 protocol that prevents creation of loops in a network and also allows the creation of backup links in case of a link fail.

Spanning Tree Portfast (Cisco)