PROGRAMMER'S BOOKSHELF

Roaming the Internet, Part 3

Up until a year ago, I was only vaguely aware of the Internet's existence. In fact, my only exposure to the Internet was those funny electronic-mail addresses on some peoples' business cards: mickey@disney.com and so on. Then by a strange quirk of fate, I became involved in a project with some genetics researchers at my hospital, and found that nearly all of the databases they needed access to were available only via the Internet. For better or worse, at just about the same time, the trade-book publishers were also discovering the Internet as a new market niche, so I had no dearth of reading material. And fortunately for me, some of the books actually turned out to be helpful!

Becoming acquainted with the Internet is like falling through a manhole and discovering a city of aliens with their own markets, libraries, and culture, living out an unsuspected parallel existence only a few feet away. This new world has its own code of conduct, its own heroes and villains, its own pantheon of gods and sacred cows, and its own collection of legends and myths. The players, the playing field, and for that matter the rules of the game are totally unfamiliar, even allowing for some previous experience with stand-alone UNIX systems or commercial online services such as CompuServe. To me, after having floundered my way up the learning curve over the last year, there are three particularly amazing aspects of the Internet:

The TCP/IP, e-mail, and other fundamental Internet protocols, although adopted in a fairly ad hoc manner a decade ago, continue to work well, even though the number of hosts on the net has been scaled up by at least three orders of magnitude.

The government and the primary network users pour money into the network backbone and increase its capacity year after year, but no attempt is made to make individual hosts liable for the traffic generated by their users. (For that matter, no one is exactly sure how many hosts are on the net, let alone how many users.)

Many Internet users are totally oblivious to the incredible technology and infrastructure they are exploiting, and squander network bandwidth with pointless flame wars, trivial appeals for help, thinly disguised attempts to cheat on take-home exams, and downloading of semi-useless shareware utilities from archive servers all over the globe.

Those of you who don't work in a large corporation or educational institution will probably have your first encounters with the Internet via dial-up to a so-called "public provider." This gives you access to world-wide electronic mail and USENET news, but the low bandwidths of a modem connection essentially make you a second-class citizen on the net. To reap the full benefits of the archive sites and tools such as gopher and WAIS, you really need to be hardwired to the network. Making this happen is no trivial chore, and a job I recommend you leave to the experts. Nevertheless, I wanted to wind up this series of book reviews about the Internet (see also the December 1992 and February 1993 issues of DDJ) by mentioning a few books that will help you decipher the many layers of network arcana and (eventually) become somewhat self-sufficient. In addition, I've included a list of other Internet-related books, some previously reviewed.

DNS and Bind, by Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu, and TCP/IP Network Administration, by Craig Hunt, are members of the "Nutshell Handbook" series from O'Reilly and Associates. Although there is some degree of overlap between the two books, I strongly recommend that you get both; the differing perspectives and emphasis of the authors can be quite helpful when trying to debug TCP/IP or mail problems. TCP/IP Network Administration starts with basic TCP/IP protocol concepts, moves on to routing, domain name services, and sendmail configuration, and finishes up with chapters on troubleshooting and security. DNS and Bind, as you would expect from the title, focuses much more intensely on setting up and maintaining domain name servers and resolvers. Both books, like all the other O'Reilly books I've been exposed to, demonstrate careful writing, tasteful editing, and painstaking production. They're a pleasure to own and use.

The Internet Message, by Marshall T. Rose, is billed as "The Exciting Fourth Book in MTR's Networking Trilogy." Rose is well known for his work on the Internet mail system and OSI directory services over the last decade, and more recently has been influential in the development of multimedia-mail protocols. The Internet Message is basically an explanation of how the Internet name services, mail protocols, mail-transport agents, and mail-user agents work and interact, with a great deal of Rose's personal humor, philosophy, and editorialization thrown in at no extra charge. For example:

There are still people in the world who think OSI is going to happen. I suppose there are also people in the world who think that the moon is made of cheese. However, I wouldn't necessarily trust the judgement of either kind of optimist.

Although Rose has little patience with the ponderous, poorly thought-out OSI standards and implementations, he's also ecumenical. The notorious weak points of the UNIX-based Internet tools come in for their share of criticism:

Perhaps the most commonly used implementation of a mail transfer agent in the Internet is sendmail. It is a tribute to the Internet mail system that it works so well given that sendmail behaves so poorly_. Clearly, sendmail is an excellent example of how to do a lot of things wrong. But, since sendmail is shipped with Berkeley UNIX, most sites just put up with it_. People just stumble along with a canned sendmail configuration, poking at it from time to time if problems arise.

After spending more than a few hours puzzling over sendmail configuration files, I was relieved to find out that I wasn't the only person who considered it brain-damaged. You needn't trouble yourself to read The Internet Message if you're content to use your system's mail programs blindly. However, if you are considering writing your own mail or news client, or even if you are just curious about the underlying mechanisms of electronic mail, The Internet Message is an excellent place to start.

The Internet System Handbook, edited by Daniel Lynch and Marshall Rose, is not so much a book as a hardbound collection of technical essays by diverse networking computer scientists, gurus, and engineers. There's a lot of valuable information in this book, but you have to mine it for what you need; the book is only loosely organized, and there is a significant amount of overlap and redundancy. The book is also uneven in both style and technical level and suffers from an obvious lack of copy editing; some articles are stilted and opaque, while others are refreshingly direct and practical. One can only regret that, presented with such a unique collection of raw material, the publisher didn't invest a little more effort in processing that material into a structured, coherent, approachable whole. Nevertheless, this book should be on the shelf of every serious network programmer and administrator.

End-user books: The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog, by Ed Krol (O'Reilly & Associates, 1992, ISBN 0-56592-025-2, $24.95). An excellent mid-level introduction to the Internet. How to connect, why to connect, how to use basic network tools, and how to troubleshoot networking problems. Highly recommended; by far the best of all the end-user Internet books.

Internet: Getting Started, April Marine, Susan Kirkpatrick, Vivian Neou, and Carol Ward, editors (Prentice Hall, 1993, ISBN 0-13-327933-2, $28.00). A lot of useful reference material: index to RFCs, list of public providers, overseas contact information, and so on. Not primarily a "how-to" book,

so it makes a good companion to the Krol book.

Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide, second edition, by Brendan P. Kehoe (Prentice Hall, 1993, ISBN 0-13-010778-6, $22.00). Brief guide to Internet utilities and resources from a typical UNIX viewpoint. In spite of the title, definitely not for the average PC user. A bit too technoid and smug for my taste, and the editing and production values are dismal.

The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking, by Tracy LaQuey and Jeanne C. Ryer (Addison-Wesley, 1993, ISBN 0-201-62224-6, $10.95). Apparently directed at the technologically illiterate--could have been titled Bill and Ted's Excellent Network Adventure.

Internet: Mailing Lists, Edward T.L. Hardie and Vivian Neou, editors (Prentice Hall, 1992, ISBN 0-13-327941-3, $39.00). Comprehensive guide to mailing lists, many of which are reflected to USENET (or vice versa). Especially valuable for Internet users who have dial-up e-mail access only, or for Bitnet users.

Using UUCP and UseNet, by Grace Todino and Dale Dougherty (O'Reilly & Associates, 1986, ISBN 0-937175-10-2, $21.95). UNIX-centric, but instructions on the use and abuse of Internet "news" will be helpful to all.

Network administration: DNS and BIND, by Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu (O'Reilly & Associates, 1992, ISBN

1-56592-010-4, $29.95). Very helpful explanations of DNS, bind, sendmail configuration, and so on. Coverage of Sun OS peculiarities is sometimes spotty.

TCP/IP Network Administration, by Craig Hunt (O'Reilly & Associates, 1992. ISBN 0-937175-82-X. $29.95). Clearly written, extremely helpful overview of TCP/IP from protocol basics to configuration of gateways, DNS, and sendmail. Also includes nice discussions of network troubleshooting and security considerations.

Internetworking: A Guide to Network Communications, by Mark A. Miller (M&T Books, 1991, ISBN 1-55851-143-1, $34.95). A somewhat abstract overview of internetworking and protocols, both LAN and WAN.

Practical UNIX Security, by Simson Garfinkel and Gene Spafford (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991, ISBN 0-937175-72-2, $29.95). UNIX-centric, but includes discussions of passwords, gateways, firewall machines, and the like that will be valuable to any system administrator.

Managing UUCP and UseNet, tenth edition, by Tim O'Reilly and Grace Todino (O'Reilly & Associates, 1992, ISBN 0-937175-93-5, $27.95). General discussion of e-mail and news servers and clients.

!%@:: A Directory of Electronic Mail Addressing and Networks, by Donnalyn Frey and Rick Williams (O'Reilly & Associates, 1990, ISBN 0-937175-15-3, $27.95). A coffee-table book for Internet nerds.

Networking technology: TCP/IP: Architecture, Protocols, and Implementation, by Sidnie Feit (McGraw-Hill, 1993, ISBN 0-07-020346-6, $45.00). Textbook approach: thorough but not very friendly.

The Simple Book: An Introduction to Management of TCP/IP-based Internets, by Marshall T. Rose (Prentice Hall, 1991, ISBN 0-13-812611-9, $54.00). A nice explanation of SNMP by one of its inventors.

The Internet Message: Closing the Book with Electronic Mail, by Marshall T. Rose (Prentice Hall, 1993, ISBN

0-13-092941-7, $44.00). Overview of Internet mail protocols by one of the most famous Internet gurus.

Internet System Handbook, Daniel C. Lynch and Marshall T. Rose, editors (Addison-Wesley 1993, ISBN 0-201-56741-5, $59.25). A massive collection of technical essays and overviews, of varying levels of usefulness.

Stacks: Interoperabilitiy in Today's Computer Networks, by Carl Malamud (Prentice Hall, 1992, ISBN 0-13-484080-1, $35.00). A succinct overview of competing network protocols and transports: OSI, TCP/IP, ISDN, X.25, and the like.

Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue, by Carl Malamud (Prentice Hall, 1992, ISBN 0-13-296898-3, $26.95). This book defies classification. The author recounts his jaunts around the world to meet Internet wizards and taste exotic foods.

DNS and BIND

Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu

O'Reilly & Associates, 1992

418 pp. $29.95

ISBN 1-56592-010-4

TCP/IP Network Administration

Craig Hunt

O'Reilly & Associates, 1992

502 pp. $29.95

ISBN 0-937175-82-X

The Internet

Message: Closing the Book with

Electronic Mail

Marshall T. Rose

Prentice Hall, 1993

370 pp. $44.00

ISBN 0-13-092941-7

The

Internet System Handbook

Daniel C. Lynch and

Marshall T. Rose, editors

Addison-Wesley, 1993

700 pp. $59.25

ISBN 0-201-56741-5