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Vol. 6,
No. 5
2-2-06
1 IP, DNS and ports
2 New
users
3 Apple is too loud, IE 7, cyber sea monkeys, Google drops a fortune
4 Mac remote control
5 IE within Firefox
6 Free music players
The return of Hash and his Mac Tips this week is cause for celebration and the topic suggested to me the subject of my own post. Welcome back Harish! Also Matt has chosen and email question with not one but two answers. Unique idea for the newsletter but it demonstrates that the entire team, not just the individual who answered first, evaluates the email questions.
For the next couple of weeks I want to explain ports and port forwarding but for that to make sense I first have to explain the Internet Protocol for identifying individual connections. Many of you are familiar with the term IP Address and know it’s a group of four sets of three hexadecimal numbers. In computer language each set of three numbers is converted to 1s and 0s to represent the binary value of the number so each group is called an octet.
Since eight 1s and 0s in a string equals a byte of data you could say that each group represents a byte and each address is, therefore, four bytes of data. Since there are only two values possible for each of the 8 binary numbers the possible number of total values for the octet is 28 (sorry that looks weird but there’s no way to type exponents without a special keyboard or software. It represents 2 to the 8th power, or 2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2), or 256. That means each octet can have a decimal value of 0 through 255.
The four octets together have a value of 232, or 4,294,967,296. Each physical connection to the Internet must have a unique IP Address, which acts as sort of a cyber Street Address for the device. When the connected device sends a message out asking for content such as a web page it has to send it to the correct address and the content requested will be sent back to the address of the requester.
Each web site must also have a unique IP but obviously you don’t go to Yahoo by typing 216.109.112.135 (one of the IP addresses owned by Yahoo) into your browser. To get around this the Internet uses something called DNS, or Domain Name Services. This a two-tiered system that consists of 13 Root DNS Servers that handle the top level domains (TLDs) like .com, .net, .biz etc. plus the country specific like .us, .co.uk and so on. When you type an address like www.thepcgurus.com into your browser (or click on that convenient link ;)) your machine asks your ISP, or Internet Service Provider, to send that page to you. Your ISP then queries one of the Root Servers to get the IP address.
The Root determines which TLD the IP belongs in, and then queries one of thousands of mirrors, or secondary DNS servers, for the IP of the individual device or site. Once the Root has all the information it fires a response back to the ISP and they in turn ask the owner of that IP to send your content to the IP of your customer.
It sounds complicated, and it is, but it all happens in milliseconds and it’s all transparent to the end user. There are built in redundancies to cover for network outages and hardware failures and these servers are scattered all over the world.
Now these IP addresses are just the point of connection. At every address there are multiple programs and services running like HTTP for web pages, POP3 or IMAP for email, FTP for file transfers etc. Since there are so many available services at each address you need to specify a port to use for whatever you’re trying to do.
There are 65,536 ports available to use on an IP. Some are assigned to specific core services, some are registered for specific programs, some are open for public use and some are reserved for private use. All of them are important to you and next week I’ll tell you why, as well as tell you ways you can manipulate them in a way that will allow you to act as a server for some very useful programs.
Valentine’s day is coming, be ready…
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Have you played music on your iPod loud enough to be heard across the street even through your ear buds? Did you suffer permanent hearing loss as a result? Sue Apple:
Microsoft has introduced a public Beta version of its new IE 7, which includes tabbed browsing and enhanced security features, for XP SP2 users only:
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+releases+IE+7+beta+to+public/2100-1032_3-6033116.html?tag=nefd.top
Speaking of browsers, Mozilla has released the new SeaMonkey 1.0 Internet Suite which includes a browser, email client, HTML editor and IRC chat client:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/news.html
Google shares lost an astonishing $13 billion in one day amid a shortfall on fourth quarter earnings predictions and accusations of censorship and copyright infringement:
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article342636.ece
Copy us on the
good stuff ;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattdattilo.com
Mac Tip of the Week
If you have multiple Macs in your home like I do, you may have the need to control your Macs from a remote computer. The really elegant option of course is to get the Apple remote desktop software. But at $300 for a 10-client license it is an expensive option and overkill for the home use. And as always, where there is a problem there is an open source solution. Enter VNC (Virtual Network Computing), the poor man's remote desktop. VNC is a cross-platform open source program that makes it possible to remotely view and interact with computers. And of course, it's free.
Usually, using VNC entails installing VNC server software on the computer being controlled and VNC client software on the remote computer. One of the hidden gems in OSX 10.4 (Tiger) is that it has built in support for VNC.
To activate this feature go to System Preferences - Sharing and under the Services Tab, check the box next to Apple Remote Desktop. Make a note of the IP address of the computer following the message "Others can manage your computer using the address xx.x.x.x"
Click on the Access Privileges button. Here you will be able to use the checkboxes to control what a remote user can do on your machine such as "delete and replace items" or open applications.
Check the box next to "VNC users may control screen with password". Make sure you enter a secure password in the box. Click on OK. Next click on the Firewall Tab. Scroll down and check the box next to VNC. If you don't have VNC on the list of Firewall items, click on the New button and using the drop down arrow, click on VNC for the port name. Leave the default values in place for TCP and UDP ports.
Now this computer can be accessed from any computer that has VNC client software installed. There are lots of them out there and you can download them from Versiontracker for free. My personal favorite is Chicken of the VNC.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/
Once you download and install the software start the Chicken of the VNC program. In true Mac style the program will go out and find the available computers on your network. Just select your computer, enter your password and you will see the remote computer on your desktop. In case the computer doesn't show up on the server list you can type in the IP address of the computer in the host field.
Harish Venkatachalam
Firefox Extension of the Week
So we've almost
got you weaned off of Internet Explorer and into
Firefox. Then, some
website comes along and won't let you access a page
unless you are using
Internet Explorer. In the past, we've tricked it,
used other
extensions to pop open an Internet Explorer window for the
briefest of
times, and then close it when we are done, and just flat out
avoided those
sites. Well, today, I bring you a revolution. Now we
can open an
Internet Explorer window INSIDE of a Firefox tab. I bring
you, IETab.
That entire introduction for this little extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=1419&application=firefox
Go
there, do the honors of installing it, and then notice some subtle
differences that are now present. The first and most prevalent is that
there is a small Firefox logo in the bottom right hand corner of the
window. Clicking that will change it to an Internet Explorer window,
and thereby render the page that you are looking at in Internet Explorer
without any extra windows or pop ups. To change back to Firefox, click
the IE logo that is now present. You can toggle this back and forth
all
you wish.
What good is it going to do? The first thing
that it can do is it can
open certain pages in an IETab as soon as you type
them in. To set
which sites it does that for go to Tools
->Extensions -> IETab and add
in any sites that you use that MUST have
IE. Some good ones: Microsoft
Update (http://update.microsoft.com), whatever
banking site you use, any
other E-commerce sites that will not allow for
anything other than IE.
The list is endless, but as time progresses,
us web developers hope this
list gets shorter and shorter. The other
thing this tool is good for is
for us web developers. To see what your
page is going to look like in
IE, all we have to do is make one simple
click. It really does cut down on the time when making lots of little
edits that can make the difference between a good webpage and a great
one.
In other news, Firefox 1.5.0.1 is out. Firefox should give you
a popup
telling you that it wants you to upgrade. With their new
upgrade
system, it will download a very small file that will patch the
program,
instead of the old way where you had to download the whole
installer
again. Just follow their little popup, and you will be on
your way!
Daniel A. Williams
daniel@thepcgurus.com
Email Question of the Week
Q: I am looking for a music organizer /
player that is not web-based. I
just want to load some CD\'s into a program
that can create paylists,
etc but not try to acces the web in the background.
I do not want to
download music, just to file and play my own.
Something I can trust
not to infect my computer. (and I\'d like freeware,
shareware, sorry)
Any suggestions?
Love your newsletter,
appreciate your hard work and sharing your
wisdom &
advice.
A: Music Match Jukebox and Winamp are a
MP3/Wave/CD player that you can download for free. They both support some of the
features that you don't
want to do but you can choose not to use those
features. The important thing
is they are both spyware/malware free. Of
course, you could always use that
lousy Windows Media
Player...
A.J.
A:
In addition to A.J's suggestions, I would highly recommend
iTunes.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
You
don't have to use the music download features. I use it primarily
as a
jukebox software - loading CDs, making playlists, burning
favorites,
streaming music etc. It is incredibly simple to use, and it
is
definitely malware free.
Hash
hash@ucanweb.com
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