On Feb 21, 2006, at 8:36 AM, Peter Saint James wrote:
What I would think would be the thing to do in such a situation, I
have never seen anyone do, and I wonder why. Can't they just look
up these setting on one of their machines in the Windows equivalent
of System Preferences?
If it's possible, where is the information? I assume it's in the
Control Panel somewhere. Probably under network, right?
If your computer cannot figure those things out, it cannot connect,
and those numbers are not on your system anywhere.
Hoo, boy, some basics:
Those are the critical addresses needed for your computer to navigate
the internet.
IP Address. Every system connected to the internet needs one of
these, and it needs to be unique. This is typically expressed as a
number like: 192.168.134.72
This is KIND of like stating my street address as:
Arizona.Tucson.85721.1703 East Mabel Street
The farther to the left the number the wider an area it covers.
Since the IP protocol was designed to facilitate a network of
networks (what the Internet really is is a vast collection of
mutually cooperating, smaller local networks) your computer needs to
know who is 'local' and who isn't.
The Subnet Mask (typically a number like 255.255.255.0 or any number
of combinations like that) is a numerical construct, that when OR'ed
(a computer operation) against an IP address tells the system whether
it's local or not.
If it's local, it can contact the system directly. If it isn't, it
needs to contact the outside world.
You do that through the Gateway, which is your local network's 'door'
to the rest of the internet.
The DNS address is actually a later innovation (the seminal paper
describing TCP/IP by Cerf and Kahn was published in 1974 <http://
tinyurl.com/e94ne> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP-IP>, DNS not
until 1983 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System>) that
allowed us to attach names www.google.com, to IP addresses :
dbdev2:~/Desktop/wikicalc johnson$ host www.google.com
www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com.
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.104
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.147
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.99
That is the result of using a DNS server, the last bit you need, is
the system that translates (or facilitates the translation of) that
name: www.google.com to an address the computer can actually use:
66.102.7.104
There are two ways (three-ish, actually) to get these addresses to
your computer:
DHCP and Manual, the two choices you have in your networking control
panel or preferences.
A DHCP server sits on a local network and waits for computers to say,
essentially, "help! where am I? Who am I? Where is the rest of the
world?" This uses a lower level of networking than TCP/IP to
accomplish, and will only work on a local network. The DHCP server
then checks to see if it's allowed to talk to your computer, and if
so, tells it those four vital numbers it needs.
This is how home cable routers work, in fact.
The other way, Manual, needs a human who knows this, and so needs a
geek handy.
The -ish way is Bonjour, ex-Rendezvous, aka ZeroConf <http://
www.zeroconf.org/>, which is an Appletalk-ish self discovery
mechanism where by computers local to each other can trade this
information around, without the need for a DHCP server. They can at
least talk to each other, but at least ONE of them needs to know how
to get out, if any of them are to do so.
So when you go to an internet cafe, one of three things will happen:
Your computer is set to DHCP, and the server gives you an address,
and all is happy happy.
Your computer is set to DHCP, but the server doesn't recognize you,
and won't give you the addressess. Not happy happy.
Your computer needs to be set to manual, and given an address by a geek.
--
Bruce Johnson
This is the sig who says 'Ni!'
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