What Can You Do with an Intranet?

An intranet adds Internet-like services to your LAN. Many organizations, especially those with large existing computer systems, have lots of information that is hard to get at. The intranet can change all that, by using Internet tools. Here are some ideas for ways that your organization-large or small-ean use an intranet.

E-mail within the organization and to and from the Internet People can use one e-mail program to exchange mail both with other intranet users and with the Internet.

• Private discussion groups Using a mailing list manager or a news server accessible only to people in your organization, you can set up mailing lists or newsgroups to encourage people to share information within departments or across the organization. Alternatively, you can use web-based message boards,
• Private web sites Each department in your organization can create a web site that is accessible only to people on the intranet. Instead of circulating memos and handbooks, information can go on these web sites. For example, the marketing department can post information about products, including upcoming release dates, how products are targeted, and other information that isn't appropriate for a public site on the Internet-based web. By using the intranet instead of printing on paper, it's economical to publish large documents and documents that change frequently.
• Access to databases If your organization has information in databases, you can convert the data to web pages so that everyone on the intranet can see it. For example, a nonprofit organization might have a database containing all of its fundraising and membership information. By using a program that can display database information as web pages and enter information from web page forms into the database, all the people at the organization can see, and even update, selected information from the database by using only a web browser. Naturally, the program would need to limit who could see and change particular information in the database.
• Teleconferencing Rather than spend big bucks on video teleconferencing systems, think about using your intranet (and the Internet), instead. If your organization has offices in several locations, you can use the Internet for online chats with text, voice, shared whiteboards, and even limited video

About DSL Connections

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) is a family of all-digital, high-speed lines that use your normal phone wires with special modems on either end. Most DSL lines are actually ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line). ADSL is optimized for the way many people use the Internet: more downloads than uploads. The line is asymmetric, because it has more capacity for data received by your computer (such as graphics, video, audio, and software upgrades) than for data that you send (such as e-mail and browser commands).

About Dial-Up Connections

A dial-up connection to the Internet works over an ordinary phone line. Dial-up connections use the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) and are also called PPP accounts. Early dial-up connections used older protocols (SLIP and CSLIP), but these protocols are no longer used.
To use a dial-up account, you need a modem. (To distinguish dial-up modems from newer, high-speed modems, they are also called analog modems or dial-up modems.) Most computers come with an internal modem-eheck the back of the computer for a phone jack (RJ-ll jack). Most ISPs support modems at speeds of 28.8 kilobits per second (Kbps) and 56 Kbps. You connect only when you want to use Internet services and disconnect (hang up) when you are done.

To connect, you need a PPP-compatible communications program, such as Dial-Up Networking, which comes with all versions of Windows since Windows 95. This program dials the phone by using your modem, connects to your ISP, logs into your account by using your user name and password, and then establishes a PPP connection, thus connecting your computer to the Internet. While connected, you can use a variety of programs to read your e-mail, browse the Web, and access other information from the Internet. When you are done, you use your communications program to disconnect from your Internet account.

How Filtering Works?

When you set up a filter in your e-mail program, the program moves messages from inbox to a designated folder as Soon they are received. This process enables you focus on the mail in your inbox when time is tight and to leave the filtered mail in Cler folders for when you have more time. Alternatively, you may choose to target -priority e-mail and filter it into another folder, which you attend to first. Filtering works by looking at the contents of the message. Normally, you tell your e-mail application to look at the contents of the message and to do something with the message based on what it finds. You may choose to look at the headers, such as who - message is to or from, or what the subject line is. Alternatively, you may want to at specific words in the message. For instance, you may want to filter all messages at least put the message in a folder that you specify.

Devising a rule to sort messages that always come from the same place or that are always addressed to the same address usually is easy. For instance, you can easily sort messages from a mailing list or from a small group of people (say, the eight colleagues rking with you on a particular project). However, sorting junk mail (unsolicited marketing messages) out of your inbox is considerably more difficult because you have devise a rule that sorts only junk mail and not the mail that you actually want to read.

What Are Databases?

A database is a collection of pieces of related information that is organized so its various informational items can be located and retrieved when needed. Billions of electronic databases exist, but only some of them can be accessed on the Web. Your health insurer, for example, probably has a searchable database that contains information about your recent health history, but that database is not available on the Web.

On the other hand, many databases are indeed available on the Web. Some databases on the Web can be used by anyone at no charge, and others require that users belong to a particular organization or pay a fee. Web-accessible databases are part of what is sometimes referred to as the hidden Web, the deep Web, or the invisible Web: information that cannot be directly located with today's general-purpose search engines because it is "hidden" behind query forms. To locate information in most web-accessible databases, you need to be able to find the database itself and make your query. Databases on the Web include library catalogs, telephone books, public records, and news and magazine archives. For example, if you use a web search engine to look for a specific book, you probably won't find Amazon.corn's page about the book because Amazon's book information is stored in a database that isn't indexed by search engines.

Some databases are fully indexed, meaning that you can search the entire database for the occurrence of any word. Other databases are indexed only by fields. For example, to find someone in a white pages database, you need to search for information for a particular field. If you type "Mckinley" into the last name field of a white pages search, you see only people with the last name of McKinley rather than people who live on McKinley Avenue.

Histroy of Linux

Linux is a multiuser - multitasking operating system. This was developed by Linus Bendedict Torralds a second year computer science student of Helsinki University. This operating system is a colone of unix operating system. This was designed and developed mainly to incorporate all the functionalities of unix for PC users.

The first version of Linux 0.01 was released in mid September 1991 over the internet. Linus holds the copy right, but allowed other users to use the software freely. The users can modify and resell the modified versions. Many interested programmers added many applications and features such as windows manager, networking tools, program development utilities such as C, C++ compilers and debuggers.

Although Linux is free and open environment in the internet, it follows the official standard of unix called POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface for Computer Environments) given by IEEE.

How Do Search Engines Work?

Dozens of search engines are available on the Web. Each search engine gathers information a little differently. Some engines scan the entire web page; others focus on the page title; some analyze the references from one web page to another; still others read keywords and information included in meta tags (tags that include keywords about the page) on the web page. These different methods are the reason you can get different results from different search engines.

Popular search engines include Google (www.google.com), MSN Search (search.msn.com), AltaVista (www.aItavista.com), and Yahoo (www.yahoo.com).
Most search engines go beyond just searching for web pages. Some search engines allow you to search for information from Usenet newsgroups.