Zen and the Art of Internet | Page 4

section came from an impressive introductory document put together
by SuraNet. Some definitions in the one are from an excellent glossary put together by
Colorado State University.
This guide would not be the same without the aid of many people on The Net, and the
providers of resources that are already out there. I'd like to thank the folks who gave this
a read-through and returned some excellent comments, suggestions, and criticisms, and
those who provided much-needed information on the fly. Glee Willis deserves particular
mention for all of his work; this guide would have been considerably less polished
without his help.
Andy Blankenbiller Andy Blankenbiller, Army at
Aberdeen
[email protected] Alan Emtage, McGill University Computer Science Department
Brian Fitzgerald Brian Fitzgerald, Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute
John Goetsch John Goetsch, Rhodes University, South Africa
[email protected] Jeff Kellem, Boston University's Chemistry Department
[email protected] Bill Krauss, Moravian College
Steve Lodin Steve Lodin, Delco Electronics
Mike Nesel Mike Nesel, NASA
Bob Bob Neveln, Widener University Computer Science
Department
[email protected] (Wanda Pierce) Wanda Pierce, McGill University
Computing Centre
[email protected] Joshua Poulson, Widener University Computing
Services

[email protected] Dave Sill, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
[email protected] Bob Smart, CitiCorp/TTI
[email protected] Ed Vielmetti, Vice President of MSEN
Craig E. Ward Craig Ward, USC/Information Sciences Institute
(ISI)
Glee Willis Glee Willis, University of Nevada, Reno
Charles Yamasaki Chip Yamasaki, OSHA
Network Basics
We are truly in an information society. Now more than ever, moving vast amounts of
information quickly across great distances is one of our most pressing needs. From small
one-person entrepreneurial efforts, to the largest of corporations, more and more
professional people are discovering that the only way to be successful in the '90s and
beyond is to realize that technology is advancing at a break-neck pace---and they must
somehow keep up. Likewise, researchers from all corners of the earth are finding that
their work thrives in a networked environment. Immediate access to the work of
colleagues and a ``virtual'' library of millions of volumes and thousands of papers affords
them the ability to encorporate a body of knowledge heretofore unthinkable. Work
groups can now conduct interactive conferences with each other, paying no heed to
physical location---the possibilities are endless.
You have at your fingertips the ability to talk in ``real-time'' with someone in Japan, send
a 2,000-word short story to a group of people who will critique it for the sheer pleasure of
doing so, see if a Macintosh sitting in a lab in Canada is turned on, and find out if
someone happens to be sitting in front of their computer (logged on) in Australia, all
inside of thirty minutes. No airline (or tardis, for that matter) could ever match that travel
itinerary.
The largest problem people face when first using a network is grasping all that's available.
Even seasoned users find themselves surprised when they discover a new service or
feature that they'd never known even existed. Once acquainted with the terminology and
sufficiently comfortable with making occasional mistakes, the learning process will
drastically speed up.
Domains
Getting where you want to go can often be one of the more difficult aspects of using
networks. The variety of ways that places are named will probably leave a blank stare on
your face at first. Don't fret; there is a method to this apparent madness.
If someone were to ask for a home address, they would probably expect a street,
apartment, city, state, and zip code. That's all the information the post office needs to

deliver mail in a reasonably speedy fashion. Likewise, computer addresses have a
structure to them. The general form is:
a person's email address on a computer: [email protected] a computer's name:
somewhere.domain
The user portion is usually the person's account name on the system, though it doesn't
have to be. somewhere.domain tells you the name of a system or location, and what kind
of organization it is. The trailing domain is often one of the following:
com Usually a company or other commercial institution or organization, like Convex
Computers (convex.com).
edu An educational institution, e.g. New York University, named nyu.edu.
gov A government site; for example, NASA is nasa.gov.
mil A military site, like the Air Force (af.mil).
net Gateways and other administrative hosts for a network (it does not mean all of the
hosts in a network). {The Matrix, 111. One such gateway is near.net.}
org This is a domain reserved for private organizations, who don't comfortably fit in the
other classes of domains. One example is the Electronic Frontier Foundation named
eff.org.
Each country also has its own top-level domain. For example, the us domain includes
each of the fifty states. Other countries represented with domains include:
au Australia ca Canada fr France uk The United Kingdom. These also have sub-domains
of things like