The Network Information Service or NIS is Sun Microsystems’ “Yellow Pages” (YP) client-server directory service protocol for distributing system configuration data such as user and host names between computers on a computer network. Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... Client/Server is a network application architecture which separates the client (usually the graphical user interface) from the server. ... A directory service is a software application — or a set of applications — that stores and organizes information about a computer networks users and network resources, and that allows network administrators to manage users access to the resources. ... For other senses of this word, see protocol. ... A hostname (occasionally also, a sitename) is the unique name by which a computer is known on a network. ... A BlueGene supercomputer cabinet. ... Blue RJ-45 patchcord of the type commonly used to connect network devices. ...

Sun licenses this technology to virtually all other Unix vendors.

As the name “Yellow Pages” was a registered trademark in the United Kingdom of British Telecom PLC for their (paper) commercial telephone directory, Sun changed the name of their system to NIS, though all the commands and functions still start with “yp”. For the use in computing, see Yellow Pages (computing). ... A trademark, trade mark, â„¢ or ®[1] is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by an organization to uniquely identify itself and its products and services to consumers, and to distinguish the organization and its products or services from those of other organizations. ... BT Group plc (which trades as just BT, and is commonly known by its former name, British Telecom) is the privatised former British state telecommunications operator. ...

NIS/YP is used for maintenance and distribution of a central directory of user and group information, hostnames, e-mail aliases and other text-based tables of information in a computer network. For example, in a common UNIX environment, the list of users for identification is placed in /etc/passwd, and secret authentication hashes in /etc/shadow. NIS adds another “global” user list which is used for identifying users on any client of the NIS domain. Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... Authentication (Greek: αυθεντικός = real or genuine, from authentes = author ) is the act of establishing or confirming something (or someone) as authentic, that is, that claims made by or about the thing are true. ... In cryptography, a cryptographic hash function is a hash function with certain additional security properties to make it suitable for use as a primitive in various information security applications, such as authentication and message integrity. ... In computing, a client is a system that accesses a (remote) service on another computer by some kind of network. ...

Technically NIS can be configured to serve password data used to authenticate users against as well; however, not only is this cumbersome to do without resorting to DES encrypted passwords (which are known to be weak) if multiple OSs are in use, it also allows any NIS client to retrieve the whole password database for offline inspection. Kerberos was designed to handle authentication in a more secure manner. The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is a cipher (a method for encrypting information) selected as an official Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the United States in 1976, and which has subsequently enjoyed widespread use internationally. ... An operating system (OS) is a computer program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... Kerberos is a computer network authentication protocol which allows individuals communicating over an insecure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner. ...

In many environments other directory services, which may be considered to be more modern and secure than NIS, such as LDAP, have come to replace it. For example, the 'slapd' daemon generally runs as a non-root user, and SASL-based encryption of LDAP traffic is natively supported. In computer networking, the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, or LDAP (ell-dap), is a networking protocol for querying and modifying directory services running over TCP/IP. A directory is a set of information with similar attributes organized in a logical and hierarchical manner. ... In Unix and other computer multitasking operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs in the background, rather than under the direct control of a user; they are usually instantiated as processes. ... Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) is a framework for authentication and authorization in Internet protocols. ...

The nameserver functionality NIS or LDAP can provide is probably better handled by DNS servers when used on large LANs, leaving just site-wide identification information for NIS master and slave systems to serve. However, some functions such as the distribution of netmask information to clients, as well as the maintenance of e-mail aliases, may still be performed by NIS or LDAP. A name server is computer server software that implements a name service protocol. ... The domain name system (DNS) stores and associates many types of information with domain names, but most importantly, it translates domain names (computer hostnames) to IP addresses. ... Lan can stand for several things: A local area network Lan (airline) formerly LanChile Lan Peru Län, a kind of administrative division used in Sweden Lan Mandragoran, a fictional character in the Wheel of Time fantasy series by Robert Jordan. ...

NIS commands

• ypcat
• ypmatch
• ypwhich
• ypclnt
• yppasswd
• ypset
• ypmake
• ypinit
• yppush
• ypserve

See also

• portmap
• TCP Wrappers
• Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
• Name Service Switch (NSS)
• Network File System (NFS)
• Domain Name System (DNS)
• Hesiod
• NIS Damon server

Portmap is server software running under Unix-like systems that converts RPC program numbers into DARPA protocol port numbers. ... TCP Wrapper is a host-based network ACL system written by Dr. Wietse Venema, used to filter otherwise (yet) unauthenticated network access to Internet protocol services run on (Unix-like) operating systems such as Linux or BSD. Allowing host or subnetwork IP adresses, names and/or ident query replys, to... Remote procedure call (RPC) is a protocol that allows a computer program running on one computer to cause a subroutine on another computer to be executed without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this interaction. ... The Name Service Switch (NSS) allows replacement of many Unix configuration files (e. ... Network File System (NFS), a protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984 and defined in RFCs 1094, 1813, and 3530 (obsoletes 3010) as a distributed file system, allows a user on a client computer to access files over a network as easily as if attached to its local disks. ... The domain name system (DNS) stores and associates many types of information with domain names, but most importantly, it translates domain names (computer hostnames) to IP addresses. ... In computing, the Hesiod name service originated in Project Athena (1983 - 1991). ...

External links

• The NIS-HOWTO from the Linux Documentation Project
• Van Emery: Distributed Authentication System (DAS) Handbook
• Solaris 8 and Debian NIS howto Tim Gibbon 2003
• Kristy Westphal: NFS and NIS Security Securityfocus article Jan. 22, 2001
• Red Hat Linux 9: Red Hat Linux Security Guide - 5.3. Securing NIS