C

caching

The process of temporarily storing recently accessed information in a special memory subsystem for quicker access.

certificate

A digital document that is commonly used for authentication and to secure information on open networks. A certificate securely binds a public key to the entity that holds the corresponding private key. Certificates are digitally signed by the issuing certification authority (CA), and they can be issued for a user, a computer, or a service.

See also certification authority (CA).

certification authority (CA)

An entity responsible for establishing and vouching for the authenticity of public keys belonging to subjects (usually users or computers) or other certification authorities. Activities of a certification authority can include binding public keys to distinguished names through signed certificates, managing certificate serial numbers, and certificate revocation.

See also certificate.

checksum

A calculated value that is used to test data for the presence of errors that can occur when data is transmitted or when it is written to disk.

Connection Manager Administration Kit (CMAK)

A tool for creating, editing, and managing Connection Manager profiles. The Connection Manager is a client dialer.

connection object

An Active Directory object that represents a replication connection from one domain controller to another. The connection object is a child of the replication destinations NTDS Settings object and identifies the replication source server, contains a replication schedule, and specifies a replication transport. Connection objects are created automatically by the Knowledge Consistency Checker (KCC), but they can also be created manually. Automatically generated connections must not be modified by the user unless they are first converted into manual connections.

See also Active Directory.

See also Knowledge Consistency Checker (KCC).

See also replication.

connection request policy

A set of conditions and profile settings that network administrators use to specify how Internet Authentication Service (IAS) servers handle incoming authentication and accounting request messages.

See also authentication.

See also Internet Authentication Service (IAS).

See also remote access policy.

convergence

The process of stabilizing a system after changes occur in the network. For dynamic routing, if a route becomes unavailable, routers send update messages throughout the network, reestablishing information about preferred routes.

For Network Load Balancing, a process by which hosts exchange messages to determine a new, consistent state of the cluster and to elect the default host. During convergence, a new load distribution is determined for hosts that share the handling of network traffic for specific Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or User Datagram Protocol (UDP) ports.

See also User Datagram Protocol (UDP).

convergence time

The time it takes for a system to achieve convergence. For dynamic routing, the convergence time is the amount of time it takes for the all routers to obtain an accurate representation of the internetwork topology after a change is detected.

See also convergence.

See also router.