When a company or organization wants to use the Internet, they must decide whether they want to do it by directly attaching to the Internet system or whether they will use another company to supply the connection. Many companies choose to use another company, called a service provider, because it reduces the amount of equipment, administration, and costs involved. If the company or organization wants to directly connect (and sometimes when they are using a service provider), t....

An SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server is a machine that transports mail, just like a Web server is a machine that displays Web pages when requested. An SMTP server is sometimes referred to as an outgoing mail server, which brings me to the point—you need one in order to complete the exercises in this chapter. On Linux/UNIX, Sendmail and Qmail are popular packages. On Windows, the SMTP service in the Windows NT Service Pack, or the service built into....

Nearly all new computers come with a CD-ROM drive, a sound card, and speakers, which can turn any computer into a simple CD audio player. You can play your own audio CDs on your computer, but you may have more fun scouring the Internet for free music to play from your hard disk or a CD-R (CD recordable) drive.One reason there are so many free music files on the Internet is the restrictive nature of the recording industry. In the old d....

One of the most widely used network topologies (and the one most often used in medium to large Local Area Networks) is the bus network. A bus network uses a cable to which are attached all the network devices, either directly or through a junction box of some sort. Each device uses a transceiver to connect to the backbone. The manner of attachment depends on the type of bus network, the protocol in use, and the speed of the network. The main cable that is used to connect all t....

The Domain Name System is one way to resolve host names in a TCP/IP environment. In non-Microsoft environments, host names are typically resolved through host files or DNS. In a Microsoft environment, WINS and broadcasts are also used. DNS is the primary system used to resolve host names on the Internet. In fact, DNS had its beginning in the early days of the Internet.In its early days, the Internet was a small network established by the Department of Defens....