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# Outlook on the Following Chapters

The next few chapters will deal with configuring for TCP/IP networking, and with running some major applications. Before getting our hands dirty with file editing and the like, we will examine IP a little closer in chapter-. If you already know about the way IP-routing works, and how address resolution is performed, you might want to skip this chapter.

Chapter- deals with the very basic configuration issues, such as building a kernel and setting up your Ethernet board. The configuration of your serial ports is covered in a separate chapter, because the discussion does not apply to TCP/IP networking only, but is also relevant for UUCP.

Chapter- helps you to set up your machine for TCP/IP networking. It contains installation hints for stand-alone hosts with only loopback enabled, and hosts connected to an Ethernet. It will also introduce you to a few useful tools you can use to test and debug your setup. The next chapter discusses how to configure hostname resolution, and explains how to set up a name server.

This is followed by two chapters featuring the configuration and use of SLIP and PPP, respectively. Chapter explains how to establish SLIP connections, and gives a detailed reference of dip, a tool that allows you to automate most of the necessary steps. Chapter- covers PPP and pppd, the PPP daemon you need for this.

Chapter gives a short introduction to setting up some of the most important network applications, such as rlogin, rcp, etc, in chapter-. This also covers how services are managed by the inetd super, and how you may restrict certain security-relevant services to a set of trusted hosts.

The next two chapters discuss NIS, the Network Information System, and NFS, the Network File System. NIS is a useful tool to distribute administrative information such as user passwords in a local area network. NFS allows you to share file systems between several hosts in your network.

Chapter gives you an extensive introduction to the administration of Taylor UUCP, a free implementation of the UUCP suite.

The remainder of the book is taken up by a detailed tour of electronic mail and Usenet News. Chapter- introduces you to the central concepts of electronic mail, like what a mail address looks like, and how the mail handling system manages to get your message to the recipient.

Chapters- and- each cover the setup of smail and sendmail, two mail transport agents you can use for . This book explains both of them, because smail is easier to install for the beginner, while sendmail is more flexible.

Chapters- and- explain the way news are managed in Usenet, and how you install and use C-news, a popular software package for managing Usenet news. Chapter- briefly covers how to set up an NNTP daemon to provide news reading access for your local network. Chapter- finally shows you how to configure and maintain various newsreaders.

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Next: Issues of TCP/IP Networking Up: Introduction to Networking Previous: System Security