(1) A user-defined group of network resources within a single domain. Spans provide a level of security by allowing the system administrator to define (a) the resources to which an operator can issue commands, (b) the views of resources that an operator can display, and (c) the resources in a view that an operator is allowed to see (an operator might not be authorized to see all the resources in a particular view).
(2) An attribute of a policy that defines the range of influence of a policy in a policy hierarchy. For example, the span attribute indicates whether a policy in a policy hierarchy is inherited only by its immediate child nodes or by its immediate child nodes and all their descendents.