TCP/IP

Serving Up DNS (The Domain Name System) (TCP/IP) Part 1

DNS (the Domain Name System) is a distributed system — it’s stored in pieces across the network; no single computer holds all the information. The core of DNS is the database that stores information about domain names and addresses. Think of the DNS database as a kind of Internet telephone directory. Instead of looking up […]

Serving Up DNS (The Domain Name System) (TCP/IP) Part 2

Secondary name servers In school, the little kids in primary school look up to the big kids in secondary school. But on the Internet, it’s just the opposite: The big kids are the primary name servers. Secondary name servers download copies of name/ address information from a primary or another secondary name server. Secondary name […]

Digesting Web Clients and Servers (TCP/IP) Part 1

The World Wide Web (or Web or WWW or W3) is the worldwide hypermedia information service on the Internet. Its definition may sound complex, but it’s simply saying that the Web is the graphical interface to the Internet, compliments of the protocols HTTP and HTTPS. This topic is about both Web standards for Web languages […]

Digesting Web Clients and Servers (TCP/IP) Part 2

Storing user information as cookies Cookies are small files that Web sites use to keep track of visitors. A Web server may store one or more cookies on your local hard disk. For example, a Web page might ask for your postal code. The server stores the postal code and a unique ID number within […]

Digesting Web Clients and Servers (TCP/IP) Part 3

Reducing the Web’s Wide Waistline to Increase Speed Even though HTTP is an efficient Internet protocol, some people think that WWW stands for World Wide Wait instead. Web speed ranges from tortoise speed to warp speed. All those fancy graphics you see on Web pages are high fat and take a long time to open. […]

Digesting Web Clients and Servers (TCP/IP) Part 4

Setting Up a Caching Proxy Server This section talks about caching proxy servers, which are included in most firewall programs. The difference is that plain vanilla proxies provide security | protection by letting you filter traffic that’s entering your network. The act of caching proxies, in addition to filtering, keeps fetched pages in their caches […]

Digesting Web Clients and Servers (TCP/IP) Part 5

Setting Up a Web Server A Web server is software that accepts HTTP requests from browser clients and serves up, to the client, either Web page responses or, sometimes, sadly, error messages. A Web server can also support secure Web connections with HTTPS (with SSL or TLS protocols). If you plan to set up a […]

Minimum Security Facilities (TCP/IP)

This topic lists the nastiest muggings that can happen to your computer and a few basic security practices you can use to protect your computer and your intranet. The information in this topic introduces the basic security vocabulary and techniques to prepare you for the application topics that follow. What’s the Worst That Could Happen […]

Eating Up E-Mail (TCP/IP) Part 1

Add remote and mobile access for dessert and you have a satisfying meal. E-mail, which is the first network application that most people use, has been around for so long (since 1971, when the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, hadn’t yet morphed into the Internet) that many of us forget that some folks […]

Eating Up E-Mail (TCP/IP) Part 2

Sharpening the Finer Points of Mail Servers Table 13-1, a little earlier in this topic, simplifies the task of describing the mail process. For example, how does your snail mail post office know where the delivery office is? For most of us, the address of a letter contains a postal code that maps to a […]

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