Network Information Service

networking, protocol (NIS) Sun Microsystems' Yellow Pages

(yp) client-server protocol for distributing system

configuration data such as user and host names between

computers on a network.

Sun licenses the technology to virtually all other Unix

vendors.

The name "Yellow Pages" is a registered trademark in the

United Kingdom of British Telecommunications 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", e.g. ypcat, ypmatch, ypwhich.

Unix manual pages: yp(3), ypclnt(3), ypcat(1), ypmatch(1).

(1995-04-08)