Glossary¶

Networking¶

Term	Definition
ASW	Access switch — provides endpoint connectivity for a network segment
BGP	Border Gateway Protocol — routing protocol used by Cilium to announce Kubernetes service IPs
FSW	Fabric switch — high-speed east-west switch for GPU-to-GPU traffic
GW	Gateway — site router/firewall that handles inter-VLAN routing and internet access
GPON	Gigabit Passive Optical Network — fiber access technology used by AT&T
LLDP	Link Layer Discovery Protocol — neighbor discovery on Ethernet
MDF	Main distribution frame — central wiring point where outside lines enter and internal cabling originates
MSW	Management switch — dedicated out-of-band network for IPMI, BMC, and infrastructure management
RDMA	Remote Direct Memory Access — low-latency data transfer bypassing the CPU
ToR	Top-of-rack switch — primary data switch in a server rack
VLAN	Virtual LAN — logical network segmentation on a shared switch
VSW	PoE / video switch — switch dedicated to powering and connecting cameras or outdoor endpoints

Term	Definition
BMC	Baseboard Management Controller — out-of-band management processor on a server motherboard
C2C	Chip-to-Chip — NVIDIA's direct interconnect between Grace CPU and Blackwell GPU on the DGX Spark
DGX Spark	NVIDIA's compact ARM64 AI workstation with a GB10 (Grace Blackwell) SoC
Freckle	Custom-built rackmount compute nodes designed for this homelab
GSP	GPU System Processor — NVIDIA firmware that runs on the GPU for driver offloading
IPMI	Intelligent Platform Management Interface — standard for out-of-band server management
JetKVM	Compact IP KVM device for remote keyboard/video/mouse access
MCIO	Mini Cool Edge IO — high-density PCIe connector used to break out NVMe lanes from the motherboard
vPro	Intel Active Management Technology — remote management built into Intel CPUs

Term	Definition
Ceph	Distributed storage system providing block (RBD), filesystem (CephFS), and object storage
CephFS	Ceph's POSIX filesystem layer
CSI	Container Storage Interface — Kubernetes standard for storage drivers
OSD	Object Storage Daemon — a Ceph process managing a single storage device
RBD	RADOS Block Device — Ceph's block storage interface, used for Kubernetes PVCs
raidz2	ZFS RAID level with double parity — tolerates two drive failures per vdev

Term	Definition
Cilium	eBPF-based CNI plugin for Kubernetes networking and security
Flux	GitOps toolkit that keeps Kubernetes clusters in sync with Git repositories
HelmRelease	Flux CRD that declares a Helm chart deployment and its values
Kustomization	Flux CRD that applies a set of Kubernetes manifests from a Git path
PVC	Persistent Volume Claim — a Kubernetes request for storage
Talos Linux	Immutable, API-driven Linux distribution purpose-built for Kubernetes
vLLM	High-throughput LLM inference engine used on the DGX Spark nodes

Term	Definition
PDU	Power Distribution Unit — distributes mains power to rack equipment
UPS	Uninterruptible Power Supply — battery backup for clean shutdowns during power loss

Firewalla uses some non-standard terminology in its UI and documentation.

Term	Definition
VqLAN	Firewalla's name for a VLAN-tagged network segment configured through its UI — functionally a standard 802.1Q VLAN
Network Segment	Firewalla's term for an isolated L2/L3 network, which may be a VLAN, a bridge, or a VPN-backed segment
`post_main.d`	Hook directory (`/home/pi/.firewalla/config/post_main.d/`) for scripts that run after Firewalla's main services start — survives firmware updates

Term	Definition
UNVR	UniFi Network Video Recorder — Ubiquiti's dedicated NVR appliance for UniFi Protect