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Welcome to the first issue of NetBITS! This week we bring you advice from NetBITS Publisher Adam Engst for kids (or those who just feel young on the Net) using the Internet. Editor-in-chief Glenn Fleishman weighs in with Part 1 of an extensive look at how computers talk to one another, both on local area networks and over the Internet. And finally, we introduce our Q&A column, FAQtoids, and our letters to the editor column, NettersLetters.
Contents:
Copyright 1997 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved. To subscribe to our weekly list, email <netbits-on@netbits.net>. Thanks to our sponsors for their financial support of NetBITS.
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@netbits.net>
"The Internet? It's so busy nobody uses it any more."
- not the slogan of www.yogi-berra.com, surprisingly enough [1]
Welcome to the first issue of NetBITS, a new publication from TidBITS Electronic Publishing. We're delighted to have you join us.
With all of the publications about the Internet, you might wonder why we chose this particular moment to launch a new one. As the maxim goes, write about that which interests you. We've found few forums in which to publish many of those things that interest us lately, and with the demise of the print publications NetGuide, Web Developer, and The Net [2], the merger of Mac magazines Macworld and MacUser (see TidBITS-392 and TidBITS-393), and the increase of magazines like InternetWeek which focus on the Internet industry, there will be even fewer places.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04091>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04097>
In NetBITS then, we want to share with you the Internet tools, tricks, and techniques we discover; we want to explain to you in a few minutes how things work after we've spent a week puzzling it out; we want to advise you about Internet-related hardware and software; and, finally, we'd like to keep you abreast of developments that will affect your online life.
The Internet and the print magazine worlds lack a publication where you can find all that tailored towards people who spend significant amounts of time online for personal or professional reasons and want to know more about how to use this beast of an Internet.
The people behind NetBITS spend most of their working time on Internet and Web-related tasks every day - and although no one can keep up with every development, we try to follow the important ones.
In the weeks to come, you'll find articles on cleaning browser caches; new technology like ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) and cable modems; how to get less spam; legal issues on the Net beyond just cryptography and pornography; how to read a Web log; the time-line for new top-level domains; and lots of step-by-step how-to's.
Details -- Following in the TidBITS model (and unlike most other publications), we welcome article submissions to <editors@netbits.net>. Comments on articles are also most welcome - we like to know how we've done and receive elaboration on points we've mentioned from experts in our audience. Please send letters to <letters@netbits.net>.
Also like TidBITS, NetBITS is free; we support our efforts by attracting advertisers who would like to appeal to you in a sensible and low-key way. We don't accept advertisers whose tactics we don't agree with, and we like to try anything we recommend first, whether it's an Internet service provider or an ISDN modem. Please send inquiries about advertising to <sponsors@netbits.net>.
So, welcome! Make yourself at home (or, for those of you with cable modems, @Home), and tell us what you think of the place.
[1] Yes, like Abe Vigoda, Yogi Berra is still alive and kicking despite everyone thinking he's a historical figure. (He's only 72!) His original quote was about Coney Island: "It's so crowded, nobody goes there any more." For genuine Yogi Berra quotes, see:
<http://www.yogiberraclassic.org/quotes.htm>
[2] NetGuide has gone Web-only and maintains that they will continue to produce large amounts of Web-based content. However, everyone we've talked to says most of the staff has left. Web Developer has an editor in chief and a single staffer for its Web site, and has little output but repackaged articles from other Mecklermedia publications.
<http://www.netguide.com/>
<http://www.webdeveloper.com/>
by Adam C. Engst <ace@netbits.net>
Over the years, we've all built up ways of interacting on the Internet. Those behaviors are based on our experience, both online and in the real world. Newcomers to the Internet often make mistakes because they have only non-Internet experiences. But imagine how you'd do if you were new to the Internet and also lacked experience in real life: you'd be at sea in a world with its own strange rules and without the basics most of us fall back on in unfamiliar situations.
That's a bit what it's like to be a kid on the Internet, and although there is plenty of advice for Internet newcomers, it's seldom tailored to kids. That's what I plan to do here, and this article is written explicitly to younger Internet users. I hope kids (or frankly, those who are just young on the Internet) can make use of this information when learning about the Internet. More important, perhaps, I want this advice to help jump-start discussions about the reality of the Internet between children and parents or teachers. Education is all-important, and learning about the Internet should be no exception.
Choosing an Email Username -- Sometimes you can choose your own email username when you're first getting on the Internet. That's great, but think carefully about what you choose. Email usernames should be short, easy to type, and easy to remember. It's a good idea to use your name or initials if possible, since those will be the easiest for others to remember (you almost never use your email address yourself, whereas other people use it constantly). You can choose a nickname or other word for your email username, but I'd caution against picking something you think is funny right now but might hate in a year, or a username which refers to something no one will remember in a year. You may have to live with your email username for a long time.
Spelling and Grammar -- Most of the time you communicate with people on the Internet in writing. Thus, how you write affects how other people think of you. It's a bit like clothes - wear the "wrong" clothes and some people will consider you a serious dork. Similarly, if you write badly in email, some people will assume that you're not particularly bright. It's all related to your audience, so if you're writing to a friend, things like proper spelling and grammar may not be that important, but if you're sending a message to a discussion list read by people who don't know you, it's a good idea to spend more time on your message so it's clear and correct. The goal of communication is to convey information to another person, and if your spelling and grammar make your messages hard to understand, you're failing at communicating, just as if you mumbled while speaking.
Oh, as a side note, if you're sending email to adults and you want them to take you seriously or to help you, try to avoid current slang words (adults won't understand those words, so there's no point in using them), put blank lines between paragraphs (they make your messages easier to read), and don't overdo the punctuation. There's nothing that marks a message from a kid more than having sentences end in !!!!!! instead of just a single period.
Also, don't write with the Caps Lock down unless you mean to have your message come across as though you're shouting. There's no arguing with this one - it's just the way things are on the Internet, and if you use only capital letters, people think you're shouting. Some people only use lowercase letters for much the same reason - they feel it makes their messages come across as though they're speaking softly. I generally recommend using normal case, capitalizing the first words in sentence and proper nouns and the like because it's easier to read.
Chain Mail -- If you ever receive an email message that says you must send it to 10 friends or else you'll have bad luck, immediately delete it and don't send it to anyone! Messages that tell you to forward them on to other people are called "chain mail" and they are an incredible annoyance on the Internet. Some chain mail purports to be for a good cause, but chain mail never comes with an expiration date, even when the good cause was over years ago. The problem is that gullible people keep sending chain mail around. So, even if you think it's funny, please don't participate in chain mail. If everyone did, it could potentially overwhelm the Internet because of the massive number of messages that would be generated. It's a serious enough problem that some colleges and universities consider sending chain mail is considered a violation of the campus computing rules, and you can get in big trouble for sending it.
For a real life example of how chain mail is dangerous, first take an eight by eight checkerboard and put two pennies on the first square in the lower left-hand corner. Then, moving left-to-right, double the number of pennies on each square, moving up a row when you get to the end of a row. So, there are two pennies on square 1, four pennies on square 2, eight pennies on square 3, 16 pennies on square 4, 32 pennies on square 5, 64 pennies on square 6, 128 pennies on square 7, and 256 pennies on square 8. That's $2.56, right? Let's just talk about it in terms of money from now on. On the next row, the amount of money is up to $5.12 on square 9, $10.24 on square 10, $20.48 on square 11, $40.96 on square 12, $81.92 on square 13, $163.84 on square 14, $327.68 on square 15, and $655.36 to finish the second row on square 16. If you were to continue this exercise for all 64 squares on our checkerboard, you'd have to put $18,446,700,000,000,000,000 on that final square. Not even Bill Gates has that kind of money.
So, you can see that if a piece of chain mail is forwarded to just two people who also forward it on for 64 generations, there would be so many copies of the message that no real email could ever hope to get through.
Spam Is Scam -- An unfortunate fact of life on the Internet is unsolicited commercial email, more commonly known as "spam." Basically, if you have an email address, it's likely that someone will send you mail that you didn't ask for trying to sell you something. There isn't much you can do about spam other than delete it, but keep in mind that anything that's offered via spam mail is almost guaranteed to be a scam. Just like in the real world, if something sounds too good to be true, it's probably a scam.
Email Is Not Private -- Many people assume that email is private and secure, but unfortunately, just as there's no real way to prevent people from snooping in your room, there's no guaranteed way to prevent others from reading your email. In other words, don't use email for anything that could prove truly embarrassing or you will regret it, sooner or later.
Be careful of mailing lists. If you get a message from someone via a mailing list, and you reply to that message, there's a good chance your reply will go back to the list and thus to everyone on the list. If you meant your reply to go only to the original sender of the message, it can prove extremely embarrassing. To avoid making this mistake, look at the To line in your email program when you're writing a reply, particularly if the reply is of a personal nature. Make sure the To line contains the email address of the person to whom you want to send the reply, and not a mailing list.
Chat Room Identities -- If you're participating in a chat room, be it in the Internet's IRC (Internet Relay Chat), AOL's chat rooms, or somewhere else, assume that no one is who they say. It's common practice for people to take on alternate identities when they're in a chat room. There's nothing wrong with role-playing, but some people do this for purely deceptive purposes. For instance, the majority of people using chat on the Internet or AOL are teenage boys or adult men, so the chances of it being true when someone claims they're a cute 14-year-old girl are extremely low. Don't believe anything you're told in a chat room - since you can't evaluate the source of the information, you can't tell whether or not the information might or might not be accurate.
Don't Be Gullible -- Do you believe everything you're told? How about everything you read? I certainly hope not! You should always be skeptical, and information on the Internet carries no more of a guarantee of accuracy than information from anywhere else. Just as you can find books that put forth outright lies, so too can you find Web sites that propagate incorrect information. The same will apply to email, Usenet news, and chat rooms - you must always try to figure out if the information you find or receive is accurate. The best way to do that is to look for more information on the topic, then see how that additional information compares and where it comes from.
For instance, if I tell you in a chat room that the moon is made of green cheese, you could check my statement by searching in a Web search engine like Alta Vista on something like "moon composition green cheese". If you found a Web site run by NASA talking about the composition of moon rocks and a reference regarding the moon being made of cheese in a collection of children's stories, you can then decide if NASA is more of an authority on the moon (NASA astronauts having visited it) than a children's story.
Meeting in Real Life -- At some point, you may want to meet someone in person who you've talked to on the Internet. Although it's fun to do this most of the time, be aware that it's also potentially very dangerous, since you know nothing about this person other than what they've told you. And, as I noted above, they could be lying. So here's my advice.
First, tell your parents and get permission to meet this person. Sneaking around behind their backs will only make things a lot worse when they find out, and parents always find out eventually. Second, arrange to meet in a public place - never in private. That may sound alarmist, but meeting in a public place eliminates the possibility of many bad things happening without damaging the enjoyment of the meeting. Third, don't go alone - take someone with you. Fourth and finally, never travel a long distance to meet someone in an unfamiliar city.
If you think I'm being paranoid, imagine a movie where the main character has a habit of making the wrong decision and ending up in trouble. You know ahead of time that something bad is going to happen, because of the creepy soundtrack. The music swells, and you're thinking "Don't arrange to meet at the cemetery at midnight, you idiot! We know that chat room cutie is really a homicidal maniac with a fetish for pulling the wings off flies." Now imagine yourself as the main character and see if you think that someone watching you would be hearing the creepy music and thinking "Don't be stupid!" If so, don't do the stupid thing.
Cut Here -- I hope the advice I've provided above proves useful for starting those discussions of how to make appropriate use of the Internet. I won't pretend this is the last word on the subject, so if you have a common sense suggestion for kids or others who are new to the Net, send it to me and I'll consider it for a future article.
[Adam C Engst is publisher of NetBITS and author of a number of best-selling Internet books, though he has yet to be made into an action figure.]
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@netbits.net>
Recent surveys show that there are roughly 26 million machines connected to the Internet at any given time. Some of these include dialup modem connections, but since those modems are in use most of the time, they count.
Given the number of machines and the number of connections and the size of the Internet, how does any one machine find another in this vast maze? The answer isn't simple, but it's more straightforward than I'd imagined when first trying to figure this out in late 1994.
Back then, the Engsts and I were a few of the Seattle-area "pioneers" of the Internet, and we would puzzle out these issues in order to explain them to our readers and colleagues, and to use them in our day-to-day work on the Net. We spent some time, one Saturday afternoon, trying to understand how the machines "knew" where other machines existed.
Talk Amongst Yourselves -- For starters, look at any local area network (LAN). Most people these days use Ethernet, a method of exchanging data at 10 megabits per second (Mbps) that dates back to the early 1970s and a hand-drawn sketch at a conference. (There are other kinds of networks, but the principles are similar.)
<http://wwwhost.ots.utexas.edu/ethernet/>
<http://wwwhost.ots.utexas.edu/ethernet/10quickref/ch1qr_1.html>
Keep in mind that the basic unit of measure in networking is the packet, which is a small bundle of data capped with information in a header preceding it that usually describes where the data came from, where it's headed, and what kind of data it is.
Ethernet works by controlling how different devices talk to each other; it doesn't care what kind of data it carries. Ethernet can carry TCP packets (the protocol the Internet uses), IPX packets (a Novell NetWare protocol), AppleTalk packets (the primary way Macintoshes talk to each other), and other types of data.
The main job that Ethernet hardware performs is taking a stream of data from the computer, dividing it into packets of identical lengths, and waiting for a chance to "speak" on the network. Ethernet devices are polite; they all know to wait until they don't "hear" any traffic before sending a packet. If two devices start talking nearly simultaneously, both of them stop, wait a random interval, and start again.
Devices can often talk at the same time on a busy network, and if you look at a network hub with a "collision detector" light on it, you can see that light flash as those packets "hit" each other. Packets that collide are retransmitted up to 16 times after longer and longer timeout intervals; if the transmission still fails, they're thrown away or "dropped." The busier a network is, the more chance packets will collide, and the more times they must be retransmitted. At times, this can cause networks to bog down and stop working.
(If Ethernet drops a packet, it's up to the protocol sending the packet to know how to respond. With TCP/IP, one kind of packet is retransmitted until it succeeds; a second kind, used for streaming information, like audio or real time statistics, will just be dropped, since the loss of individual packets in that protocol isn't important.)
An Ethernet network consists of wiring - the "physical medium" - laid out in either a daisy chain (one device connects to the next) or a hub-and-spoke arrangement (each wire goes back to a device that essentially cross-wires all the connections). Either way, it's just like one big continuous electrical connection. A signal on any part of an Ethernet will reach every other part of the Ethernet electrically.
You can divide big Ethernets into segments by using devices such as switches, bridges, or routers, and this is where we fit into place the next piece in the puzzle. If every device on an Ethernet network can "see" every other device (printers, workstations, routers, servers, etc.), it's simple to understand how one machine sends data to another. When you split the network up, how does a machine on one segment know how to find machines on a different segment? It's in the packet.
Finding the Right Address -- Every Ethernet device has a number assigned to it, unique in the entire world. It's called a MAC address - but has nothing to do with the Macintosh. MAC stands for Media Access Control, and it's a six-byte number, usually expressed in hexadecimal (base 16) like 00:05:02:C8:EA:5F. The first three bytes are unique by manufacturer. Global Village Communications' devices start with 00:02:88; Sun Microsystems' start with 08:00:20.
<http://standards.ieee.org/db/oui/>
These MAC addresses are broadcast constantly over the Ethernet by every device on the network. Each machine on the Ethernet has to have some notion of what other machines are out there for it to know how to send a packet - it must have a destination address. If the network is split into several pieces, the electrical connection is broken, but machines can still find each other.
The connecting devices tell the different networks about each other. Switches and bridges, for instance, are usually used to split up busy networks so each segment has less overall traffic but can still reach every other segment. (Switches are generally used in single facilities, while bridges often protect restricted resources or connect networks that are physically somewhat distant.)
The switch or bridge passes queries for resources, like printers or other servers, back and forth across networks they're connected to. When a machine on one segment wants to communicate to a machine on another, the switch "hears" the destination address and rebroadcasts the packet on the other segment.
If you're having trouble wrapping your head around this process, think of it like this. A guy has a telephone handset next to each of his ears. On each phone is a separate conference call. Whenever each group talks among its own members, he's silent. Occasionally, he hears the name of a person who's on the other conference call. He listens to the message - like, "Bill, we need more bananas!" - and then repeats the message into the other receiver. Voila! Bill receives his message, the guy in the middle does only necessary work, and both calls aren't tied up with the other's business.
You should now understand how computers talk to one another over local area networks. What happens when you introduce the Internet into the mix? Tune in next week when I finish putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
[Glenn Fleishman is editor in chief of NetBITS. His goal in life is to take a packet's eye journey over the Internet.]
Question: Why Aren't I Seeing Full ISDN Speeds? I'm using two-channel ISDN, and I should see nearly 128 Kbps. Instead, I'm only getting about 70 Kbps at the fastest. What's going on?
Answer: When you order ISDN in the U.S., you typically receive two-channel Basic Rate Interface (BRI) ISDN. The two channels each operate like separate phone lines. Each channel can carry 56 Kbps or 64 Kbps - the actual number depends on how each phone company has implemented ISDN - but the two channels are independent unless you use the right protocol.
That's why you're maxing out at 60 to 70 Kbps for each of your two open connections. Since there's no way to control which channel the data traverses, you might end up with one sitting idle while the other is clogged.
MPPP (Multi-link Point-to-Point Protocol) "binds" the two separate channels into one virtual channel, so you can take advantage of the full 112 or 128 Kbps available. MPPP must be built into the ISDN device on your end of the connection and at the service provider or company on the other end. Your computers shouldn't have to be reconfigured to make MPPP work.
If you use an ISDN device plugged into your computer's serial port, you might encounter a different problem. Many serial ports can't support speeds faster than 115 Kbps. Unfortunately, the only solution is to upgrade. If you use a PC, you can buy a special ISA serial card; if you use a Mac, you need a more recent model (Quadra 660AV and newer, generally) that uses the 230 Kbps GeoPort-based serial port technology.
Question: Who's Visiting My Web Site? I'd like to know exactly who comes to my home page. Is this possible?
Answer: It's almost impossible to know exactly who visits your Web site, even though you can learn many details about visits to your site. In future issues of NetBITS, we'll address this in more detail. In short, most Web servers keep logs that record lots of information, including the remote machine names and IP numbers, a timestamp to the second, the page requested, and often the page where the user was before clicking a link to your page.
Using special software, you can aggregate and analyze log information so you can see patterns of usage, from where traffic originates, which sites refer the most traffic to you, and which pages get the most visits. But, there's no good way to identify individuals unless they want to register at your site. In addition, setting up registration is so difficult that only a few major sites have done so. The most notable example is the New York Times, which has accumulated over a million registered users.
Question: How Do You Pronounce "URL"? I'm confused - I've heard people say "earls" and "you are ells" when they're talking about URLs. What's the proper way to pronounce URL?
Answer: Trying to get us into trouble from the very beginning, eh? As the song goes, "You say tomato, I say tomahto." With that in mind, here's our take on the pronunciation of URL. We all say "you are ell." We've noticed that people from the east coast of the U.S. are more likely to say "earl" than people from the west coast. When we had lunch with one of the people who helped develop the Web at CERN in Switzerland, he said "you are ell" (with a nice accent, admittedly). Finally, we think "earl" sounds, well, churlish. A very few people pronounce it "ural," like the mountains, but we suspect the effects of too much vodka.
[Please send Internet questions of any sort to us at <faqtoids@netbits.net> and include your full name and email address. Questions may be edited for content and length. We cannot guarantee publication or a reply.]
Comments, Clarifications, and Notes Welcome -- Obviously, we have no letters from readers for this first issue of NetBITS. We're sure that will change, of course, so please send your comments to <letters@netbits.net>.
Non-profit, non-commercial publications and Web sites may reprint or link to articles if full credit is given. Others please contact us. We do not guarantee accuracy of articles. Caveat lector. Publication, product, and company names may be registered trademarks of their companies.
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