NIS (acronym that means Network Information System according to abbreviationfinder). Network Information Service is the name of the client-server directory services protocol. Its main function is to send configuration data in distributed systems such as usernames and hosts between computers on a network. It consists of a server, various administration tools, and a client-side library. This protocol was developed by Sun Microsystems and is based on ONC RPC.
Development and expansion
Its development arises under the name of Yellow Pages (Yellow Pages or YP for its acronym in English), its attachment to this name is still used by some but it was forced to opt for the current name of NIS since the trademark registered by British Telecom required to Sun Microsystems to abandon its first founding name. Sun is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. licensed to SunSoft, Inc. Sun Microsystems reaches the conclusion of carrying out this protocol, since it would allow greater distribution of information to all the nodes of its network, observing the existing lack under DNS the which provides limited information only paying attention to the correspondence between the name of the node and the IP address being almost incoherent to configure the DNS when there is no Internet connectivity in a certain administration of a LAN. The Network Information system provides access to generic databases, being able to distribute the information contained in the different files to all the nodes of its network, thus appearing as an individual network having the same accounts in all its nodes. The expansion of this protocol has been available in all UNIX distributions, it has been referenced in turn under public domain thanks to existing free implementations mostly donated by Sun Microsystems. An example of this is BSD Net-2. Library code and administration programs appear in turn in GNU/Linux mostly ported by Swen Thümmler, among other names associated with the theme can be associated Peter Eriksson and Thorsten Kukuk both contributors to the implementations. Sun has also developed the enhanced version NIS+. Enhanced or added features include new library functions, advanced configuration schemes for node name resolution, and some labor savings from having to patch and recompile the library among other things.
