This computer network and computer network security site aims to provide book reviews and free ebooks on network security, tcp ip protocols, internetworking, osi model, socket programming, internet protocols,ipv6, voice over internet protocol, port authority, port forwarding, wireless networking, home networking, computer networking,client server computing, client server software etc.

TCP/IP Fundamentals for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft TechNet
This online book is a structured, introductory approach to the basic concepts and principles of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol suite, how the most important protocols function, and their basic configuration in the Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 and Windows® XP operating systems. This book is primarily a discussion of concepts and principles to lay a conceptual foundation for the TCP/IP protocol suite. Unlike many other introductory TCP/IP texts, this book provides an integrated discussion of both Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).
This book is not a discussion of TCP/IP planning, configuration, deployment, management, or application development. For a discussion of TCP/IP planning, configuration, deployment, and management, see the online Help for Windows Server 2003 and the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit. For a discussion of how to develop TCP/IP applications using Windows Sockets, see the Microsoft Developer Network.
This book provides an educational vehicle for the fundamentals of TCP/IP to either prepare you for a career in information technology or to augment your knowledge of TCP/IP-based networking in Microsoft Windows. This book is not intended to be a primer for computing or networking technology.
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Implementing CIFS The Common Internet FileSystem

By Christopher R. Hertel
CIFS is a network filesystem plus a set of auxiliary services supported by a bunch of underlying protocols. Any and all of these various bits have been called CIFS, which leaves us with a somewhat muddy definition. To make things easier, we'll start by saying that CIFS is "Microsoft's way of doing network file sharing", and work out the details as we go on.
The name "CIFS", of course, is an acronym. It stands for Common Internet File System, a title which deserves a bit of dissection:
Common
The term has a variety of connotations, but we will assume that Microsoft was thinking of common in the sense of commonly available or commonly used. All MS operating systems have had some form of CIFS networking available or built in, and there are implementations of CIFS for most major non-MS operating systems as well.
Unfortunately, there is not yet a specification for CIFS that is complete, correct, authoritative, and freely available. Microsoft defines CIFS by their implementations and, as we shall see, their attempts at documenting the complete suite have been somewhat random. This has an adverse impact on the commonality of the system.......
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Understanding OSI

By John Larmouth
This text aims to provide an intelligent near-beginner (as far as OSI is concerned) with an understanding of Open Systems Interconnection (OSI). Some previous acquaintance with data communications as presented in the many text books on that broad subject would be useful. The book is aimed at the reader who is curious enough to ask: "Why is it that way? What advantages does that approach give? Might there be other or better ways?"
This text is not an exposition of the technical detail of the OSI Standards. Rather it aims to explain why OSI is the shape it is, and to guide the reader in a critical examination of the OSI approach to specifying rules for computer communication (computer protocols). The text should be particularly valuable for those who are newly moving into positions where they are a part of a team developing applications using OSI, either in the International Standards' work or for their own firm. The text would also be useful for those sections of undergraduate and taught masters' courses that are dealing with OSI, either as the main text or as follow-on reading.
Much of the material of necessity represents personal perceptions and reasoning, as the real reasons for approaches and choices are rarely presented in International Standards or CCITT/ITU-T Recommendations (the primary definitive documents on OSI). The main purpose of ISO Standards and CCITT/ITU-T Recommendations is to present clearly the protocol to be implemented, not to explain the reasons for the choices. Frequently such reasons are buried in old working documents, maybe even only in private or national papers rather than being recorded in official international documents. In some cases reasons are merely in the heads of early workers, and are perhaps not even well articulated. It can also happen that earlier non-OSI protocols provided the basis for the OSI work, and reasons and rationale at the OSI level are simply "because that is the way it was done in xyz", and the search for real reasons has to go back a level. Nonetheless, I have been active in both progressing the OSI work and in presenting it at conferences and seminars for close on two decades, and the presentation in this text is believed to be a fair one.
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Design and Validation of Computer Protocols

By Gerard J. Holzmann
Protocols are sets of rules that govern the interaction of concurrent processes in distributed systems. Protocol design is therefore closely related to a number of established fields, such as operating systems, computer networks, data transmission, and data communications. It is rarely singled out and studied as a discipline in its own right. Designing a logically consistent protocol that can be proven correct, however, is a challenging and often frustrating task. It can already be hard to convince ourselves of the validity of a sequentially executed program. In distributed systems we must reason about concurrently executed, interacting programs.
Books about distributed systems, computer networks, or data communications often do no better than describe a set of standard solutions that have been accepted as correct by, for instance, large international organizations. They do not tell us why the solutions work, what problems they solve, or what pitfalls they avoid.
This text is intended as a guide to protocol design and analysis, rather than as a guide to standards and formats. It discusses design issues instead of applications. Two issues, therefore, are beyond the scope of this text: network control (including routing, addressing, and congestion control) and implementation. There is, however, no shortage of texts on both topics. The design problem is addressed here as a fundamental and challenging issue, rather than as an irritating practical obstacle to the development of reliable communication systems. The aim of the book is to make you familiar with all the issues of protocol validation and protocol design.
The first part of the book covers the basics. Chapter 1 gives a flavor of the types of problems that are discussed. Chapter 2 deals with protocol structure and general design issues. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the basics of error control and flow control.
The next four chapters cover formal protocol modeling and specification techniques, beginning in Chapters 5 and 6 with the introduction of the concept of a protocol validation model, that serves as an abstraction of a design and a prototype of its implementation. In Chapter 5 a terse new language called PROMELA is introduced for the description of protocol validation models, and in Chapter 6 it is extended for the specification of protocol correctness requirements. In Chapter 7 we use PROMELA to discuss a number of standard design problems in the development of a sample file transfer protocol. Part II closes with a discussion, in Chapter 8, of the extended finite
state machine, a basic notion in many formal modeling techniques.
The third part of the book focuses on protocol synthesis, testing, and validation techniques that can be used to battle a protocol’s complexity. Both the capabilities and the limitations of the formal design techniques are covered.
The fourth and last part of the book gives a detailed description of the design of two protocol design tools based on PROMELA: an interpreter and an automated validator. Based on these tools, an implementation generator is simple to add. Source code for the tools is provided in Appendices D and E. The source is also available in electronic form. Ordering information can be found in Appendix E.
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Fundamentals of Wireless Communication

By David Tse and Pramod Viswanath
Cambridge University Press, 2005
The past decade has seen many advances in physical-layer wireless communication theory and their implementation in wireless systems. This textbook takes a unified view of the fundamentals of wireless communication and explains the web of concepts underpinning these advances at a level accessible to an audience with a basic background in probability and digital communication. Topics covered include MIMO (multiple input multiple output) communication, space-time coding, opportunistic communication, OFDM and CDMA. The concepts are illustrated using many examples from wireless systems such as GSM, IS-95 (CDMA), IS-856(1xEV-DO), Flash OFDM and ArrayComm SDMA systems. Particular emphasis is placed on the interplay between concepts and their implementation in systems. An abundant supply of exercises and figures reinforce the material in the text. This book is intended for use on graduate courses in electrical and computer engineering and will also be of great interest to practicing engineers.
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Wireless Networking in the Developing World

Limehouse Book Sprint Team

Purpose of The Book By Publishers

The overall goal of this book is to help you build affordable communication technology in your local community by making best use of whatever resources are available. Using inexpensive off-the-shelf equipment, you can build high speed data networks that connect remote areas together, provide broadband network access in areas that even dialup does not exist, and ultimately connect you and your neighbors to the global Internet. By using local sources for materials and fabricating parts yourself, you can build reliable network links with very little budget. And by working with your local community, you can build a telecommunications infrastructure that benefits everyone who participates in it.

This book is not a guide to configuring a radio card in your laptop or choosing consumer grade gear for your home network. The emphasis is on building infrastructure links intended to be used as the backbone for wide area wireless networks. With that goal in mind, information is presented from many points of view, including technical, social, and financial factors. The extensive collection of case studies present various groups' attempts at building these networks, the resources that were committed to them, and the ultimate results of these attempts.

Since the first spark gap experiments at the turn of the last century, wireless has been a rapidly evolving area of communications technology. While we provide specific examples of how to build working high speed data links, the techniques described in this book are not intended to replace existing wired infrastructure (such as telephone systems or fiber optic backbone). Rather, these techniques are intended to augment existing systems, and provide connectivity in areas where running fiber or other physical cable would be impractical.......

We hope you find this book useful for solving your particular communication challenges.

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Planning a computer system facility in an intercomputer network

By Barry Wessler
In this talk a computer network is defined to be a set of autonomous, independent computer systems, interconnected so as to permit interactive resource sharing between any pair of systems. An overview of the need for a computer network, the requirements of a computer communication system, a description of the properties of the communication system chosen, and the potential uses of such a network will be described later.
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IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON)

Volume 14 , Issue SI ( June 2006 ) Special issue on networking and information theory
43 books relating networking
PDF for each topics are available. They are
  • Introduction to the special issue on networking and information theory
  • On the θ-coverage and connectivity of large random networks
  • Scaling properties of statistical end-to-end bounds in the network calculus
  • On the path-loss attenuation regime for positive cost and linear scaling of transport capacity in wireless networks
  • Relaying protocols for two colocated users
  • On the capacity of information networks
  • Unachievability of network coding capacity
  • An outer bound for multisource multisink network coding with minimum cost consideration
  • The encoding complexity of network coding
  • A unification of network coding and tree-packing (routing) theorems
  • On average throughput and alphabet size in network coding
  • The multicast capacity of deterministic relay networks with no interference
  • Matrix games in the multicast networks: maximum information flows with network switching
  • On achieving maximum multicast throughput in undirected networks
  • Algebraic gossip: a network coding approach to optimal multiple rumor mongering
  • Randomized gossip algorithms
  • Asymptotic analysis of multistage cooperative broadcast in wireless networks
  • Raptor codes
  • Optimal throughput-delay scaling in wireless networks: part I: the fluid model
  • On the throughput, capacity, and stability regions of random multiple access
  • Minimum-cost multicast over coded packet networks
  • Bandwidth- and power-efficient routing in linear wireless networks
  • A fast lightweight approach to origin-destination IP traffic estimation using partial measurements
  • Overcoming untuned radios in wireless networks with network coding
  • Coverage by randomly deployed wireless sensor networks
  • Statistical location detection with sensor networks
  • Optimal overload response in sensor networks
  • Capacity of queues via point-process channels
  • One-way delay estimation using network-wide measurements
  • On the scalability of cooperative time synchronization in pulse-connected networks
  • The feasibility of matchings in a wireless network
  • On the throughput scaling of wireless relay networks
  • Fundamental limits and scaling behavior of cooperative multicasting in wireless networks
  • On outer bounds to the capacity region of wireless networks
  • Degenerate delay-capacity tradeoffs in ad-hoc networks with Brownian mobility
  • Separating distributed source coding from network coding
  • Cycle-logical treatment for "Cyclopathic" networks
  • On the capacity of multiple unicast sessions in undirected graphs
  • Decentralized erasure codes for distributed networked storage
  • Lossy network correlated data gathering with high-resolution coding
  • Coding on demand by an informed source (ISCOD) for efficient broadcast of different supplemental data to caching clients
  • Critical node lifetimes in random networks via the Chen-Stein method
  • Constructions of optical FIFO queues

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The Networking CD Bookshelf

gd.tuwien.ac.at
Following books were included in this networking CD Bookshelf
  • DNS and BIND - By Cricket Liu & Paul Albitz
  • TCP/IP Network Administration -By Craig Hunt
  • Sendmail - By Bryan Costales & Eric Allman
  • Sendmail Destop Reference - By Bryan Costales & Eric Allman
  • Building Internet Firewalls - By D. Brent Chapman & Elizabeth D. Zwicky
  • Practical Unix and Internet Security - By Simson Garfinkel & Gene Spafford

Preface of DNS and BIND

You may not know much about the Domain Name System - yet - but whenever you use the Internet, you use DNS. Every time you send electronic mail or surf the World Wide Web, you rely on the Domain Name System.

You see, while you, as a human being, prefer to remember the names of computers, computers like to address each other by number. On an internet, that number is 32 bits long, or between zero and four billion or so. That's easy for a computer to remember, because computers have lots of memory ideal for storing numbers, but it isn't nearly as easy for us humans. Pick ten phone numbers out of the phone book at random, and then try to remember them. Not easy? Now flip to the front of the book and attach random area codes to the phone numbers. That's about how difficult it would be to remember ten arbitrary internet addresses. And, with IP version 6, it's soon to be a whopping 128 bits long, or between zero and a decimal number with 39 digits.

This is part of the reason we need the Domain Name System. DNS handles mapping between host names, which we humans find convenient, and internet addresses, which computers deal with. In fact, DNS is the standard mechanism on the Internet for advertising and accessing all kinds of information about hosts, not just addresses. And DNS is used by virtually all internetworking software, including electronic mail, remote terminal programs such as telnet, file transfer programs such as ftp, and web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.............

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Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification

Network Working Group
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
This document specifies version 6 of the Internet Protocol (IPv6), also sometimes referred to as IP Next Generation or IPng.
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The TCP/IP Guide

By Charles
Welcome to the free online version of The TCP/IP Guide! My name is Charles and I am the author and publisher. I hope you will find the material here useful to you in your studies of computing, networking, and programming.
Here are a few tips, links and reminders to help you out:
Introduction: Newcomers to The TCP/IP Guide may wish to read the Introduction and Guide to the Guide, which will explain what the Guide is about and provide you with useful information about how to use it.
Navigation: For assistance understanding The TCP/IP Guide’s page structure and buttons, please refer to the Navigation Tips page.
Getting Started on Content: Once you are ready to dive into the content, start at Networking Fundamentals if you are new to networking; if you know the basics of networks and the OSI Reference Model, feel free to jump straight to the TCP/IP Protocol Suite and Architecture section. Of course, remember you can use the Table Of Contents to start anywhere else you might wish!
News: News about the free version of The TCP/IP Guide will be posted on the main TCP/IP Guide home page...........
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - TCP/IP

comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains is the usenet newsgroup for discussion onissues relating to the Domain Name System (DNS).This newsgroup is not for issues directly relating to IP routing andaddressing. Issues of that nature should be directed towards comp.protocols.tcp-ip.
Question 2.3.
What is BIND ?
Date: Tue Sep 10 23:15:58 EDT 1996
From the BOG Introduction -
The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) implements an Internet nameserver for the BSD operating system. The BIND consists of a server (or``daemon'') and a resolver library. A name server is a networkservice that enables clients to name resources or objects and share thisinformation with other objects in the network. This in effect is adistributed data base system for objects in a computer network. BINDis fully integrated into BSD (4.3 and later releases) network programsfor use in storing and retrieving host names and address. The systemadministrator can configure the system to use BIND as a replacement tothe older host table lookup of information in the network hosts file/etc/hosts. The default configuration for BSD uses BIND.
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Understanding TCP/IP

By Julian Moss

Everyone knows that TCP/IP is a network protocol used on LANs, WANs and the Internet, but not everyone who uses it understands howitworks. It’s possible to use TCP/IP with little more than a knowledge of how to configure the protocol stack, but a better understanding will give you a clearer picture of what is going on in your network and why the protocol needs to be set up in a particular way.
The aim of this multi-part article is to explain the key concepts behind TCP/IP. TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. If this leads you to think that it is not just one protocol, you’re right. In fact, it is not just two protocols, either. TCP/IP is a suite of protocols. We’ll cover the most important ones in the course of this article.
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TCP/IP Fundamentals

OSI Seven Layer Model & Seminar Outline
This seminar will present TCP/IP communications starting from Layer 2 up to Layer 4 (TCP/IP applications cover Layers 5-7)
  • IP Addresses
  • Data Link Layer - Network Frames , Address Resolution Protocol
  • Network Layer - Internet Protocol , IP Routing , ICMP Error Reporting
  • Transport Layer - User Datagram Protocol , Transmission Control Protocol,
  • Session through Application Layers - Domain Name System
  • Final example tracing DNS transaction through a router

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TCP/IP and IPX Routing Tutorial

Sangoma Technologies Corp.

This tutorial is intended to supply enough information to set up a relatively simple WAN or Internet-connected LAN using WANPIPE® router cards or other routers. Explanations of IP addresses, classes, Netmask asks, subnetting, and routing are provided, and several example networks are considered. Example address and routing configurations are provided for running WANPIPE® router cards under the following protocol stacks and platforms: Unix and Linux., Microsoft TCP/IP on Windows NT Workstation/Server and Windows 95, and others. A basic explanation of IPX routing is also included.
All brand names and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.
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RFC 1180 - TCP/IP tutorial

By Theodore John Socolofsky and Claudia Jeanne Kale
This RFC is a tutorial on the TCP/IP protocol suite, focusing particularly on the steps in forwarding an IP datagram from source host to destination host through a router. It does not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
This tutorial contains only one view of the salient points of TCP/IP, and therefore it is the "bare bones" of TCP/IP technology. It omits the history of development and funding, the business case for its use, and its future as compared to ISO OSI. Indeed, a great deal of technical information is also omitted. What remains is a minimum of information that must be understood by the professional working in a TCP/IP environment. These professionals include the systems administrator, the systems programmer, and the network manager. This tutorial uses examples from the UNIX TCP/IP environment, however the main points apply across all implementations of TCP/IP. Note that the purpose of this memo is explanation, not definition. If any question arises about the correct specification of a protocol, please refer to the actual standards defining RFC. The next section is an overview of TCP/IP, followed by detailed descriptions of individual components.
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IP Addressing and Subnetting

By Charles C. Botsford
This " Free, Lecture-Based Presentation on IP Addressing and Subnetting" was created to teach computer professionals how to address IP networks and perform subnetting. Subnetting is one of the most difficult activities network technicians are required to perform. Many people have found viewing these presentations multiple times increases understanding. Use these methods for success:
  • View and listen to the sections in consecutive order. Each section relies on information from the previous sections. (The entire course takes about two and half hours.)
  • Print Out Practice Problems and Section Helpers before you view the presentation (where available).
  • Take notes, and refer to the Section Helpers while you listen to and view the presentation.
    Perform the Practice Problems to sharpen your skills.
  • Be prepared to re-view key modules where needed (usually three times is standard).
  • View summary sections to reinforce key concepts.

For test takers:

  • Learn Subnet ID/Host Charts that are a part of the "Subnetting Section Helper"
  • Practice twice a day for a week
  • Before you click start on the test, write down Subnet ID/Host Charts from memory on paper provided at testing center. (Do NOT smuggle in charts or violate testing rules!)
  • Use Charts to lookup answers to subnetting questions!

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TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview

IBM.com
The TCP/IP protocol suite has become the de facto standard for computer communications in today's networked world. The ubiquitous implementation of a specific networking standard has led to an incredible dependence on the applications enabled by it. Today, we use the TCP/IP protocols and the Internet not only for entertainment and information, but to conduct our business by performing transactions, buying and selling products, and delivering services to customers. We are continually extending the set of applications that leverage TCP/IP, thereby driving the need for further infrastructural support.In TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview, we take an in-depth look into the TCP/IP protocol suite. In Part I, we introduce TCP/IP, providing a basic understanding of the underlying concepts essential to the protocols. We continue our discussion in Part II with a survey of today's most popular TCP/IP application protocols, including emerging wireless and multimedia applications. Finally, in Part III, we cover advanced concepts and the latest infrastructural trends in networking, including IPv6, security, Quality of Service, IP mobility, and MPLS. We address the challenges that TCP/IP is currently facing and the technology being developed to overcome them.
Table of Contents
Part I. Core TCP/IP protocols
Chapter 1. Architecture, history, standards, and trends
Chapter 2. Network interfaces
Chapter 3. Internetworking protocols
Chapter 4. Routing protocols
Chapter 5. Transport layer protocols
Chapter 6. IP multicast
Part 2. TCP/IP application protocols
Chapter 7. Application structure and programming interfaces
Chapter 8. Directory and naming protocols
Chapter 9. Remote execution and distributed computing
Chapter 10. File related protocols
Chapter 11. Mail applications
Chapter 12. The World Wide Web
Chapter 13. Multimedia protocols
Chapter 14. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
Chapter 15. Network management
Chapter 16. Utilities
Part 3. Advanced concepts and new technologies
Chapter 17. IP Version 6
Chapter 18. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
Chapter 19. Mobile IP
Chapter 20. Integrating other protocols with TCP/IP
Chapter 21. TCP/IP security
Chapter 22. Quality of Service
Chapter 23. Availability, scalability, and load balancing
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Daryl's TCP/IP Primer

By Daryl Banttari
This document is designed to give the reader a reasonable working knowledge of TCP/IP subnetting, addressing, and routing. It is not intended to be complete, or to cover all issues. This is targeted toward LAN administrators just moving to TCP/IP, however it should help anyone who wants to know a little (more) about how TCP/IP works. This document does not, generally, apply to dial-up SLIP/PPP connections.
The difference between this (a primer) and an FAQ, is that most FAQ's, in practice, tend to be question-and-answer oriented, and generally seem to try to cover ALL issues, not just the ones frequently asked about. This primer is intended as a starting point for someone who has an interest in the subject, but doesn't know where to start or what questions to ask. This should also help to broaden the understanding of people who have worked with TCP/IP for a while, but either haven't had the time to study all the less-than-useful theory behind the subject, or have been somewhat overwhelmed by the many theoretical details and have missed the big picture.
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An Overview of TCP/IP Protocols and the Internet

By Gary C. Kessler
Introduction
An increasing number of people are using the Internet and, many for the first time, are using the tools and utilities that at one time were only available on a limited number of computer systems (and only for really intense users!). One sign of this growth in use has been the significant number of TCP/IP and Internet books, articles, courses, and even TV shows that have become available in the last several years; there are so many such books that publishers are reluctant to authorize more because bookstores have reached their limit of shelf space! This memo provides a broad overview of the Internet and TCP/IP, with an emphasis on history, terms, and concepts. It is meant as a brief guide and starting point, referring to many other sources for more detailed information.
What are TCP/IP and the Internet?
While the TCP/IP protocols and the Internet are different, their histories are most definitely intertwingled! This section will discuss some of the history. For additional information and insight, readers are urged to read two excellent histories of the Internet: Casting The Net: From ARPANET to INTERNET and beyond... by Peter Salus (Addison-Wesley, 1995) and Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Mark Lyon (Simon & Schuster, 1997).......
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Internet Protocol Tutorial

By Bradley Mitchell
Internet Protocol (IP) technology was developed in the 1970s to support some of the first research computer networks. Today, IP has become a worldwide standard for home and business networking as well. Our network routers, Web browsers, email programs, instant messaging software - all rely on IP or other network protocols layered on top of IP.
Two versions of IP technology exist today. Essentially all home computer networks use IP version 4 (IPv4), but an increasing number of educational and research institutions have adopted the next generation IP version 6 (IPv6).
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A Guide to TCP/IP Internetworking

By Vincenzo Mendillo
TCP/IP is a set of protocols that allow cooperating computers to share resources across a network. It was developed by a community of researchers centered around the ARPAnet. Certainly the ARPAnet was the best known TCP/IP network, but now has been replaced by the Internet. The most accurate name for the set of protocols we will describing is the "Internet protocol suite" or "Internet protocol stack". TCP and IP are two of the protocols in this suite and because they are the best known of the protocols, it has become common to use the term TCP/IP to refer to the whole family. So the generic term TCP/IP usually means anything and everything related to the specific protocols of TCP and IP. It can include other protocols, applications, and even the network medium. A sample of these protocols are: UDP, ARP, and ICMP. A sample of these applications are TELNET, FTP, TFTP, SMTP and SNMP. The Internet is a collection of international and national networks, regional networks, local networks at a number of universities and research institutions, and also a number of military networks. The term "Internet" applies to this entire set of networks. All of these networks are connected to each other. Users can send messages from any of them to any other, except where there are security or other policy restrictions on access.
Officially speaking, the Internet protocol documents are simply standards adopted by the Internet community for its own use. Internet standards are called RFC. RFC stands for Request for Comment. A proposed standard is initially issued as a proposal, and given an RFC number. When it is finally accepted, it is added to Official Internet Protocols, but it is still referred to by the RFC number. Whenever an RFC is revised, the revised version gets a new number. These documents are being revised all the time, so the RFC number keeps changing.
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Running a Perfect Intranet

By Rich Casselberry, et al.
The Internet has been growing in popularity at a phenomenal rate. Many television ads now contain URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) such as CNN's http://www.cnn.com/ and surveys commonly ask for an e-mail address. An even faster growing phenomenon, though, is the use of the Intranet.
An Intranet is an IP network designed for internal use. The growth of Intranets has been silent but rapid, and is actually where most sales of Web servers are used.
Intranets are used in many types of companies from high-tech computer firms to real estate companies to oil refineries. Everyone can benefit from the technology available.
Intranet technology is used in many different ways. It can be used to set up a central document repository or workgroup server. It can be used to integrate with existing databases, either by writing custom software or using commercial applications. Most database vendors currently have or are working on WWW interfaces to their products.
Intranets can also be used as a client/server combination, allowing quick building of distributed applications. Use of the Web can also allow develop-ers to quickly build cross-platform tools. Because HTML is an open standard, almost any computer will have a browser that can be used as a graphical user interface, or GUI.
Intranet-based tools also allow groupware applications to be integrated. Groupware applications can be built using free software, or commercial applications such as Lotus can be purchased and integrated.
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Tricks of the Internet Gurus

Introduction
--by Billy Barron

The Internet guru is a hard person to define. No test exists to qualify a person as an Internet guru. It is not always obvious who is and is not a guru. Often, I am talking to some novices and they mention that someone is an "Internet guru." When I meet this person, it is frequently the case that the supposed guru is giving out wrong and misleading information. Therefore, the first criteria of being an Internet guru is that other Internet gurus must be able to respect the accuracy your Internet knowledge.
If you watch Internet gurus in action, they usually show extremely strong feelings about the Internet. Almost all, if not all, find the Internet to be an exciting and fun place. This interest is critical to any Internet guru; the Internet is so large and changing so fast that without a strong passion, a guru will become a nonguru within a couple of years.
An Internet guru knows that the Internet only works due to information sharing that is mostly for free. The guru, therefore, must give something back to the Internet to improve the network. It might be a piece of software, documentation, frequently answering posts on Usenet constructively, or even just having a useful Gopher or Web server.
The guru knows that he or she does not and cannot know everything about the Internet. Therefore, this books offers a great deal, even to the guru. For example, while I was reading this book, I learned quite a bit about a subject that I knew nothing about, like programming muds. The guru, though, has many tools and an ability to learn that compensates for gaps in knowledge. Related to this, the Internet guru has contacts and/or friendships with other gurus that provide invaluable information.
Every guru is different in knowledge, background, career, and personality. This is important to remember. Some are not even computer professionals and instead are librarians, scientists, artists, musicians, or students. Basically, they can be from any place and any walk of life. For a brief sampling of Internet gurus, consider a few of the authors who wrote parts of this book. In many ways, I may be one of the most typical of Internet gurus. I am very strong in end-user Internet services (WWW, Gopher, OPACs, FTP sites, and so on) and can even manage routers, but I know very little about network management or muds. Another author, Kevin Mullet, is one of the people who holds Internet connectivity together within Texas—he knows network management inside and out (among other aspects of the Internet). Kenny Greenberg is also an Internet guru, even though he is first and foremost an artist. The other authors all come from different backgrounds.
Now that you may have a vague idea of what an Internet guru is, you may want to become one yourself. Fortunately, it is much easier to define the steps in becoming a guru than defining what a guru is. The steps I recommend:
  1. Become a proficient Internet user. Many books and training sessions are available to help you get to this state.
  2. Learn about the society and politics of the Internet. Books, such as The Internet Unleashed (Indianapolis: Sams Publishing, 1994), will help with this. However, nothing substitutes for some time spent on mailing lists and Usenet news.
  3. Decide which parts of the Internet excite you. Concentrate on learning these. As I said earlier, nobody knows everything about the Internet.
  4. Do some background reading. This book will definitely help you here, but reading some network documents such as RFCs is also important.
  5. Try out what you have learned—as long as it is legal and ethical. No Internet guru evolves without spending a lot of hands-on time on the network itself.
  6. When your experiments fail (and they sometimes will), either go back to Step 4 or ask on mailing lists or newsgroups, and then try again. The urge to give up may be strong at times, but don't give in!

Good luck on becoming an Internet guru. Also, make sure you have fun while reading Tricks of the Internet Gurus, or you have been missing the point.

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Managing Multivendor Networks

By John Enck and Dan W. Blacharski

Macmillan Computer Publishing

Lot has happened in the computer world since John Enck wrote the first edition of this book in 1990. The Internet has become wildly popular, which has led to the suprem-acy of TCP/IP; the mainframe is being slowly replaced (or at least augmented) by a distributed, client/server architecture; and high-speed technologies, such as ATM and FDDI, have significantly enhanced the very nature of networking.

John had three goals in writing this book:

  1. To introduce and define the fundamental network architectures of four key computer manufacturers. This information gives executive management a sufficient understanding of the basics for making informed, intelligent decisions about networks and networking strategies.
  2. To help technical management and systems personnel begin the cross-training process. By covering each vendor's systems and networking architectures using the same orientation and organization, this book gives you a common level of understanding and facilitates this horizontal training.
  3. To explore standards and technologies that greatly affect the world of multivendor networking and data communications. Many of these developments result from third-party efforts and serve to define a middle ground on which to build multivendor solutions.

In this edition, I have endeavored to supplant Mr. Enck's comprehensive work with information on some of the latest technologies and to cover some of the changes that have taken place in the networking industry during the past six years.........

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Becoming an Internet Service Provider

by Rob Kolstad, Berkeley Software Design, Inc.
Becoming an Internet Service Provider is not a mysterious or difficult process. This document outlines the steps necessary.
Introduction
For a topic that has seen so much hype of late, it is amazing how little is explained about what the Internet is and how one leverages it. This white paper gives a brief explanation of the Internet, services it provides, and how new `Internet Service Providers' start up their operation.
This article is written as an overview. It is not intended to be 100% complete (that would take an entire book!). Finally, it is written from the biased point of view of someone who does not wish to spend tens of thousands of dollars to start such a service. This bias extends to the occasional emphasis on BSDI's products.
The Internet: A Brief Overview
The formal definition of the Internet says ``The Internet is a network that connects thousands of other computer networks''. This does not seem to be particularly helpful in understanding what's really going on.
Computer networks became practical when Ethernet and the Berkeley 4.1 follow-on releases of the Berkeley BSD UNIX system started becoming widely available back in the 1982 timeframe. These `Local Area Networks' (LANs) typically spanned an area smaller than a couple square miles. Some hardware existed to connect these LANs to extend the area slightly, but not on a nation-wide scale........
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Teach Yourself TCP/IP in 14 Days

Second Edition
Sams Publishing
So you've just been told you are on a TCP/IP network, you are the new TCP/IP system administrator, or you have to install a TCP/IP system. But you don't know very much about TCP/IP. That's where this book comes in. You don't need any programming skills, and familiarity with operating systems is assumed. Even if you've never touched a computer before, you should be able to follow the material.
This book is intended for beginning through intermediate users and covers all the protocols involved in TCP/IP. Each protocol is examined in a fair level of detail to show how it works and how it interacts with the other protocols in the TCP/IP family. Along the way, this book shows you the basic tools required to install, configure, and maintain a TCP/IP network. It also shows you most of the user utilities that are available.
Because of the complex nature of TCP/IP and the lack of a friendly user interface, there is a lot of information to look at. Throughout the book, the role of each protocol is shown separately, as is the way it works on networks of all sizes. The relationship with large internetworks (like the Internet) is also covered.
Each chapter in the book adds to the complexity of the system, building on the material in the earlier chapters. Although some chapters seem to be unrelated to TCP/IP at first glance, all the material is involved in an integral manner with the TCP/IP protocol family. The last few chapters cover the installation and troubleshooting of a network.
By the time you finish this book, you will understand the different components of a TCP/IP system, as well as the complex acronym-heavy jargon used. Following the examples presented, you should be able to install and configure a complete TCP/IP network for any operating system and hardware platform.
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High-Performance Networking Unleashed

Macmillan Computer Publishing
The past decade has been witness to the radical evolution of data networks from their humble origins to their current forms. The original Local Area Networks (LANs), were nothing more than coaxial cabling, strung from terminal servers to desktop terminals whose users were treated to monochromatic text displayed on low-resolution cathode ray tubes (CRTs).
In the mid-1980s, wide area networks (WANs), too, were slow and crude. Terminal servers multiplexed access for dozens of users to 9.6Kbps circuits. These circuits connected users to mainframe-based applications that lay hidden in a remote data center.
Today, LANs have metamorphosed into high-bandwidth, high-performance, local area networks that support bandwidth- and CPU-intensive client applications such as live, interactive voice and videoconferencing, as well as e-mail and some of the more traditional forms of data processing.
WANs, too, have experienced radical, evolutionary change. Today, 9.6Kbps is deemed inadequate for most of the needs of even a single user. Just try to give a user a 9.6Kbps modem for use as anything but a paperweight!
It is important to recognize that the impetus for all these changes has been, and remains, the user's business requirements. The competitive environment of most business entities ensures that any technological innovations that offer competitive advantages--that is, better, cheaper, and/or faster--get accepted. For example, the introduction of the mouse facilitated access to computing by obviating the need for typing skills. Suddenly, almost everyone could use a computer! Personal computers, too, offered countless advantages by distributing intelligence down to the desktop.
Software developers also drove changes by constantly upgrading a dizzying array of increasingly complex products that enabled users to actually use the newly distributed processing power at their fingertips. Together, these innovations quickly made hard-wired connections to terminal servers obsolete.
Into this void came the first generation of LANs. These networks offered almost obscene amounts of bandwidth, such as 1 or 4Mb per second (Mbps), depending on whose network you purchased. Initially, these LANs were used as a more flexible means of connecting users with terminal servers. After all, the users' basic requirements hadn't changed all that much, and the increased bandwidth was more than adequate to support terminal emulation.
Towards the end of the 1980s, this first generation of LANs began to show its age. Once the user community understood that the distributed microprocessors on their desktops could do more than just terminal emulation, their quest for even more bandwidth and for higher performance networking began.
The second generation of LANs were little more than faster versions of their predecessors. 1Mbps Ethernets grew into 10Mbps Ethernets. Similarly, 4Mbps Token Rings were accelerated to 16Mbps. This increase in the clock rates would keep users somewhat satisfied up to the middle of the 1990s.......
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