BGP --Border Gateway Protocol. Interdomain routing protocol that replaces Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP). BGP exchanges reachability information with other BGP systems. It is defined by RFC 1163.
BGP next hop --IP address of the next hop to be used to reach a specific destination.
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.
fast switching --Cisco feature in which a route cache expedites packet switching through a router.
FIB --forwarding information base. A table containing the information needed to forward IP datagrams. At a minimum, this table contains the interface identifier and next hop information for each reachable destination network prefix. The FIB is distinct from the routing table (also called the routing information base), which holds all routing information received from routing peers.
flow --(NetFlow) A set of packets with the same source IP address, destination IP address, source and destination ports, and type of service, and the same interface on which flow is monitored. Ingress flows are associated with the input interface, and egress flows are associated with the output interface.
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 NetFlow FlowCollector)--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.
ToS --type of service byte. Second byte in the IP header that indicates the desired quality of service for a particular datagram.