CEF --Cisco Express Forwarding. A Layer 3 IP switching technology that optimizes network performance and scalability for networks with large and dynamic traffic patterns.
dCEF --distributed Cisco Express Forwarding. A type of CEF switching in which line cards (such as Versatile Interface Processor (VIP) line cards) maintain identical copies of the forwarding information base (FIB) and adjacency tables. The line cards perform the express forwarding between port adapters; this relieves the Route Switch Processor of involvement in the switching operation.
egress traffic --Traffic leaving the network.
fast switching --Cisco feature in which a route cache is used for expediting packet switching through a router.
ingress traffic --Traffic entering the network.
multicast data --Single packets copied by the network and sent to a specific subset of network addresses. These addresses are specified in the Destination Address field.
NetFlow --A Cisco IOS application that provides statistics on packets flowing through the router. It is emerging as a primary network accounting and security technology.
NetFlow Aggregation --A NetFlow feature that lets you summarize NetFlow export data on an IOS router before the data is exported to a NetFlow data collection system such as the NetFlow Collection Engine. This feature lowers bandwidth requirements for NetFlow export data and reduces platform requirements for NetFlow data collection devices.
NetFlow Collection Engine (formerly called NetFlow FlowCollector)--A Cisco application that is used with NetFlow on Cisco routers and Catalyst series switches. The NetFlow Collection Engine collects packets from the router that is running NetFlow and decodes, aggregates, and stores them. You can generate reports on various aggregations that can be set up on the NetFlow Collection Engine.
NetFlow v9 --NetFlow export format Version 9. A flexible and extensible means for carrying NetFlow records from a network node to a collector. NetFlow Version 9 has definable record types and is self-describing for easier NetFlow Collection Engine configuration.
RPF --Reverse Path Forwarding. Multicasting technique in which a multicast datagram is forwarded out of all but the receiving interface if the receiving interface is the one used to forward unicast datagrams to the source of the multicast datagram.
ToS byte --type of service byte. Second byte in the IP header that indicates the desired quality of service (QoS) for a particular datagram.