The Internet Connection - Hardcover

Quarterman, John S.; Carl-Mitchell, Smoot

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0201542374 ISBN 13: 9780201542370

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 1994

Synopsis

From the authors of Practical Internetworking with TCP/IP and UNIX comes another practical guide for system administrators, system designers, and others who need to know exactly how to gain access to the global network of computers served by the Internet. This book clearly shows what exactly is needed to allow corporations and individuals to connect to the Internet.

About this title

About the Author

About Smoot Carl-Mitchell

Smoot Carl-Mitchell is a Managing Partner at Texas Internet Consulting.He received his B.A. in Psychology and his M.A. in Computer Sciencefrom the University of Texas at Austin. He has consulted on numerousprojects including network design, installation, and debugging. Healong with his partner also give seminars on networking issues relatedto the growth, development, and use of TCP/IP.

John S. Quarterman and Smoot Carl-Mitchell are partners in Texas Internet Consulting, which consults in networks and open systems with particular emphasis on TCP/IP networks and UNIX systems and standards.

John S. Quarterman is Senior Technical Partner at Texas Internet Consulting, which consults in networks and open systems with particular emphasis on TCP/IP networks, UNIX systems, and standards.He is the author of The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide (Digital Press, 1990), and is a coauthor of UNIX, POSIX, and Open Systems: The Open Standards Puzzle (1993), Practical Internetworking with TCP/IP and UNIX (1993), The Internet Connection: System Connectivity and Configuration (1994), and The E-Mail Companion: Communicating Effectively via the Internet and Other Global Networks (1994), all published by Addison-Wesley. He is editor of Matrix News, a monthly newsletter about issues that cross network, geographic, and political boundaries, and of Matrix Maps Quarterly; both are published by Matrix Information and Directory Services, Inc. (MIDS) of Austin, Texas. He is a partner in Zilker Internet Park, which provides Internet access from Austin. He and his wife, Gretchen Quarterman, split their time among his home in Austin, hers in Buffalo, New York, and various other locations.

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From the Back Cover

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From the Inside Flap

This book explains how to connect your

computer or network to the world's largest computer network and community of computer users: the Internet.

The Internet

The Internet is the largest computer network

in the world, consisting of more than 13,000

networks and more than 1,776,000 machines as

of July 1993. It has been growing approximately 100 percent annually for the last five

years. The TCP/IP protocols used in the

Internet are very capable, but are not plug

and play. The pool of knowledgeable TCP/IP

engineers is not growing as fast as the Internet itself. This book addresses that gap in knowledge.

There is no Internet, Inc. to call for service like the old telephone monopoly. The

Internet is a worldwide decentralized distributed

cooperative interconnection of

numerous

underlying

technologies

and

organizations with no overall goals, management, or pricing structure. Like the current

telephone system, there are many suppliers of

Internet connectivity and services, some competing, some complementary. Just as the local

telephone company usually does not do the

wiring inside your house, your Internet connectivity provider will not set up the environment inside your local host machine or your

local network. This book tells you how to do

it yourself.

The Internet is not like television. When

you join the Internet, you become a participant, able to post mail and news; to publish

files, documents, and software; and to make

your machines directly accessible to others,

if you wish. Your machine or network becomes

a part of the distributed Internet mail system, and can become a server of many other

kinds of information. This book tells you how

to join the Internet community.

The Book

This book shows how to connect to the Internet, step by step, from finding a connection

through registering a domain and a network

number, through configuring your TCP/IP protocols, to running your own domain server and setting up your mail and news systems. Security techniques are described, for use either

with or without a router. The most common new

Internet services, netfind, archie, WAIS, and

gopher, are covered. Access information for

network connectivity providers, for domain and

IP network number registries, and for other

books, is included.

Much of the material in this book is applicable to any software platform, because it is about the TCP/IP protocols, which were

designed to work with any platform. Singleprocess personal computer operating systems such as MS-DOS and MacOS are most frequently used as clients of network services. The book includes information on where to get TCP/IP

software packages for IBM compatibles and

Macintoshes. Multi-process operating systems

such as UNIX commonly run both clients and

servers. Most of the detailed information on

the book on setting up and configuring network

application servers is about UNIX software.

This book is about setting up communications

between your host or network and the Internet.

That is, it is about communications with the

outside world. We must address some internal

LAN issues in dealing with external connectivity, but we avoid discussion of issues solely

related to LANs, just as we avoid discussion

of issues of system administration, unless

they also are related to external connectivity.

The book includes brief overviews of Internet services and protocols, and it briefly

describes what the Internet is and is not, and

how it differs from other networks. However,

we assume the reader already knows about those

other networks, knows about Internet services,

and already wants to connect to the Internet.

This book shows how to do that.

Organization

The book begins with two overview chapters,

about services and networks.

Chapter 1, Internet Services gives a motivational overview of what you can do with the

Internet, and then describes the size and

growth of the Internet. The bulk of the

chapter describes specific Internet services, their facilities and advantages, and

the TCP/IP protocols that support them on

the Internet.

Chapter 2, The Internet and Other Networks

gives an overview of the history, protocols,

and politics of the Internet and other networks, such as FidoNet, UUCP, BITNET,

USENET, that together form the global Matrix

of computers that exchange electronic mail.

These contextual chapters set the stage and

define the terms for the rest of the book. If

you are already familiar with the Internet,

you may want to skip forward to the other

chapters, but there is an amazing amount of

disinformation about the Internet in circulation, and these chapters are short and, we hope, accurate.

Before you can use the Internet you have to

decide how to connect,

and you may need to register organizational

names and network addresses.

Chapter 3, Types of Internet Access categorizes types of access to the Internet, ranging from public hosts to direct fiber optic

connections at hundreds of megabits per second. The chapter includes very brief

refresher on protocol layering models and

Internet protocol layers.

Chapter 4, Registering Domain Names and IP

Numbers tells exactly how to register a domain name and a network number, and where to get the registration forms by electronic mail, or on paper or CD/ROM.

The rest of the chapters show how to set up Internet services, and are presented approximately in the order you are likely to need the services they describe.

Chapter 5, Setting Up IP
Chapter 6, Setting Up the Domain Name System
Chapter 7, Setting Up Internet Electronic Mail
Chapter 8, Setting Up USENET News
Chapter 9, Security Issues
Chapter 10, Setting Up Resource Discovery Services

These chapters do not

attempt to describe all possibilities in

great generality (we've already done that in

another book, Practical Internetworking with

TCP/IP and UNIX). Instead, they give the

short and direct path to getting what you're

most likely to need set up as quickly and

painlessly as possible.

The appendices provide names and addresses for

sources of information.

Appendix A, Internet Providers lists Internet providers, from public login hosts to dialup and direct IP connectivity providers.

Appendix B, Registration Templates includes

the actual text of example registration templates for domains and IP network numbers,

and the addresses to send them to.

Appendix C, Software and Other Information

tells where to get the software (often over

the Internet itself; sometimes for free;

sometimes from commercial suppliers).

Appendix D, Further Reading is a brief reading list of books about the Internet and other networks.

There is a brief glossary, and a brief index.

The cover shows a view of the world from above the north pole, with each of four networks glowing in its own color light. Similar maps appear on four of the endpapers,* showing the whole world, Eurasia, and most of Canada and the United States. As the legends indicate, wide orange ellipses are for UUCP, tall violet ellipses are for FidoNet, blue squares are for BITNET, EARN, and other NJE networks, and green circles are for the Internet; these four networks are the largest distributed networks in the Matrix, and they are described briefly in Chapter 2. The size of an icon indicates the number of host computers near the center of the icon.

For example, the map of Eurasia shows the Internet green as the most prevalent in the north and west of Europe, and BITNET (or other NJE network) blue as the most widespread in the middle east. In eastern Europe, Internet green fades into FidoNet and UUCP violet and orange in central Asia, until east Asia suddenly shows all four networks again. However, the Internet is following behind those two access networks, and green Internet circles are visible in Talinn, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Moscow, Novosibirsk, New Delhi, Bombay, and Accra, Ghana.

The fourth endpaper shows growth rates of the Internet alone in each country of the world. Much of the world is already connected, from Antarctica to Siberia, from Greenland to Ecuador, from Australia to Austria. The newest countries are growing the fastest, but even the longest connected and most densely networked countries are adding new hosts at exponential rates. Readers

This book is for readers who know they want a

connection to the Internet, not to a different

network. It is for anyone who wants to

connect a single machine or a network to the

Internet. Such a machine might be in someone's

house or office, in a company or a university.

Such a network might be in a company office or

a university department.

Managers and executives can use the

Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0201542374
• ISBN 13: 9780201542370
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 271