Scope

Scope is a term which has a number of meanings in the world of information systemw.

Programming languages

Most formally, in a programming language, it is the range in a program over which a particular variable is visible/usable.

For instance, local variables in an inner block can only be used in that block.

A global variable is one which can be seen, and used, anywhere; in programming languages which allow separately compiled modules to be joined together with a linker after the compilation, a global variable created in one could be seen/used in any part of the linked program.

Networks

In a communication network, a scope means a subset of the network, one inside a boundary which selects a portion of the entire network.