Authority vs Repository

An authority and a repository definition are sometimes used interchangeably in IPS and have different meanings at other times. The following points expound upon the definitions and clarify their usage.

• An authority is a person, groups of persons, or a corporation that publishes a package.

• A repository is a location from where packages are downloaded from . The location constitutes an address (URL) of a machine .

• A repository can contain packages from many authorities. Conversely many repositories can contain packages from a single authority.

• A default or preferred authority is similar to a default catalog. Any package chosen for installation is first searched for in the preferred authority's catalog. This package may be available for download from different repositories.

• You can have many repositories and one default authority. In this case, the default authority becomes the default repository.

• If there is only one default repository, it also becomes the default authority.