3. Glossary of Frequently Used Terms

Authentication

A process whereby Anubis determines the authenticity of the connecting party, its user name and configuration settings.

Protocol

Any standard for the exchange of information. A protocol defines the specific wording and control flow for communications between two or more programs, devices, or systems.

SMTP

Simple Mail Transport Protocol is a common mechanism for exchanging mail across a network. This protocol is described in the RFC 821 document.

Daemon

We use a term daemon to define a process that runs in the background, doing automated processing.

Server

A server provides information or other services for its clients. Most network protocols are client--server based. This term usually refers to an entire machine, but it can refer (and we're doing that) also to the particular program or process, on that machine, that provides the service.

Proxy

We use a term proxy to define a program, which goes between the MUA and the MTA (it makes a tunnel). It can be used as a gateway to the outside world, while using a firewall. In this case the host under the firewall sends data to the proxy server, which in turn forwards it to the real server outside, receives the response, and passes it back to the internal host.

Guile

GNU's Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions. It provides a Scheme interpreter conforming to the R4RS language specification. GNU Anubis uses Guile as its extension language. For more information about Guile, See section `Overview' in The Guile Reference Manual.

GPG

GNU Privacy Guard, a tool compatible with the Pretty Good Privacy.