The Network Information Service, or NIS (originally called Yellow Pages or YP), is a client–server

directory service In computing, a directory service or name service maps the names of network resources to their respective network addresses. It is a shared information infrastructure for locating, managing, administering and organizing everyday items and network r ...

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technolog ...

for distributing

system configuration A system configuration (SC) in systems engineering defines the computers, processes, and devices that compose the system and its boundary. More generally, the system configuration is the specific definition of the elements that define and/or prescri ...

data such as user and host names between

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

s on a

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

developed the NIS; the technology is

licensed A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

to virtually all other

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

vendors. Because

British Telecom BT Group plc (trade name, trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is th ...

PLC owned the name "

Yellow Pages The yellow pages are telephone directories of businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for ...

" as a registered

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

for its paper-based, commercial

telephone directory A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that ...

, Sun changed the name of its system to NIS, though all the commands and functions still start with "yp". A NIS/YP system maintains and distributes 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 Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

environment, the list of users for identification is placed in and secret

authentication Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicati ...

hashes in . NIS adds another "global" user list which is used for identifying users on any

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuabl ...

of the NIS domain. Administrators have the ability to configure NIS to serve password data to outside processes to authenticate users using various versions of the Unix crypt(3) hash algorithms. However, in such cases, any NIS(0307) client can retrieve the entire password database for offline inspection.

Successor technologies

The original NIS design was seen to have inherent limitations, especially in the areas of scalability and security, so other technologies have come to replace it. Sun introduced

NIS+ NIS+ is a directory service developed by Sun Microsystems to replace its older 'NIS' (Network Information Service). It is designed to eliminate the need for duplication across many computers of configuration data such as user accounts, host names ...

as part of Solaris 2 in 1992, with the intention for it to eventually supersede NIS. NIS+ features much stronger security and authentication features, as well as a hierarchical design intended to provide greater scalability and flexibility. However, it was also more cumbersome to set up and administer, and was more difficult to integrate into an existing NIS environment than many existing users wished.

has been removed from Solaris 11. As a result, many users choose to stick with NIS, and over time other modern and secure distributed directory systems, most notably

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory servi ...

(LDAP), came to replace it. For example,

slapd 
The SLAPD (Standalone LDAP Daemon) and SLURPD (Stand-alone LDAP update replication daemon)  originally evolved within the long-running project that developed the LDAP protocol. It was developed at the University of Michigan, and was the first Light ...

(the standalone LDAP

daemon Daimon or Daemon (Ancient Greek: , "god", "godlike", "power", "fate") originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology and of later Hellenistic religion and Hell ...

) generally runs as a non-

root user In computing, the superuser is a special user account used for system administration. Depending on the operating system (OS), the actual name of this account might be root, administrator, admin or supervisor. In some cases, the actual name of th ...

, and SASL-based encryption of LDAP traffic is natively supported. On large LANs,

DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...

servers may provide better

nameserver A name server refers to the server component of the Domain Name System (DNS), one of the two principal namespaces of the Internet. The most important function of DNS servers is the translation (resolution) of human-memorable domain names (example. ...

functionality than NIS or LDAP can provide, leaving just site-wide identification information for NIS master and slave systems to serve. However, some functionssuch as the distribution of netmask information to clients, as well as the maintenance of e-mail aliasesmay still be performed by NIS or LDAP. NIS maintains an NFS database information file as well as so called maps.

References

External links

* * * * * * RHEL 9 will remove support for NI
Alexander Bokovoy, Sr. Principal Software Engineer slide show
{{Sun Microsystems Unix network-related software Sun Microsystems software Network management Directory services Inter-process communication

Successor technologies

See also

References

External links