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EXPERIMENT:- 8

AIM:- TO STUDY ABOUT USENET,MIME TYPES,NEWSGROUPS,COMMUNICATION

SOFTWARES,INTERNET TOOLS AND DNS.

USENET:- Usenet is a worldwide discussion system distributed mainly (but not exclusively) over the
Internet (its formation actually predates the Internet). It consists of thousands of publicly accessible so-
called newsgroups each of which deals with a specific topic. Everyone can post messages (or news
articles, as they are called) to any of these groups and read what others have posted. Everyone even can -
observing certain rules - create a new newsgroup dealing with a new topic.

Newsgroups are hierarchically structured. There are general top-level hierarchies such as comp (for
computing), soc (for social) etc. There is a special top-level hierarchy alt (alternative) that is less
regulated than the others with respect to creating new newsgroups.

Hierarchy levels are separated by dots. For instance, comp.sys.next.software is a newsgroup that deals
with software for the NeXT computer system.

To make sure that only on-topic messages are posted, some newsgroups (by reader decision) are
moderated. Messages posted to moderated groups are not directly distributed but automatically emailed to
the moderator of the group, who decides if the message will appear in the newsgroup.

If you are new to Usenet, you should read the group news.announce.newusers which contains regular
postings with information for new users. Especially important are postings such as A Primer on How to
Work With the Usenet Community and Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette that deal
with the so-called Netiquette, i.e. common rules about how to communicate with others via Usenet.

NEWSGROUPS:- A newsgroup is a discussion about a particular subject consisting of notes written

to a central Internet site and redistributed through Usenet, a worldwide network of news discussion
groups. Usenet uses the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP).

Newsgroups are organized into subject hierarchies, with the first few letters of the newsgroup name
indicating the major subject category and sub-categories represented by a subtopic name. Many subjects
have multiple levels of subtopics. Some major subject categories are: news, rec (recreation), soc (society),
sci (science), comp (computers), and so forth (there are many more). Users can post to existing
newsgroups, respond to previous posts, and create new newsgroups.

MIMETYPES:- MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) media types were originally devised
so that e-mails could include information other than plain text. MIME media types indicate the following
things –

 How different parts of a message, such as text and attachments, are combined into the message.
 The way in which each part of the message is specified.
 The way different items are encoded for transmission so that even software that was designed to
work only with ASCII text can process the message.

Now MIME types are not just for use with e-mail; they have been adopted by Web servers as a way to tell
Web browsers what type of material was being sent to them so that they can cope with that kind of
messages correctly.
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MIME content types consist of two parts −

 A main type
 A sub-type

The main type is separated from the subtype by a forward slash character. For example, text/html for
HTML.

This chapter is organized for the main types −

-Text - image - multipart - audio - video - message - model - application

For example, the text main type contains types of plain text files, such as −

 text/plain for plain text files

 text/html for HTML files
 text/rtf for text files using rich text formatting

COMMUNICATION SOFTWARES:- Communication software is an application or program

designed to pass information from one system to another. Such software provides remote access to
systems and transmits files in a multitude of formats between computers.Communication software forms
a part of communication systems with software components classified according to functions within the
Open Systems Interconnection Model (OSI Model). The best defined examples of communication
software are file transfer protocol (FTP), messaging software and email.

EX. SKYPE,Perhaps the most popular free IM chat, this app is lightweight, intuitive and reliable for
everyday chats and audio/video calls. It easily replaces the need for VoIP service or phone lines for
overseas calls. For more sophisticated tools, Skype offers paid subscriptions.

INTERNET TOOLS:- Electronic instruments based on Internet technology with which parties can
interact (e.g., Intranet, extranet, Web page, e-mail, videoconference, and discussion groups

Some basic tools –

E-Mail

Electronic Mail was one of the original uses of the Internet. By assigning individual addresses to users,
the routing system of the Internet is able to direct messages from user to user. This process is usually very
quick, because electronic mail is often made up of small quantities of low-ASCII (plain text), which is not
resource intensive. Many electronic mail packages are commerically available for SLIP, PPP and Direct
Connections to the Internet.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol. FTP is one of the standard languages of the Internet which determines how files
are transferred from one location to another.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language. HTML is a set of codes which World Wide Web Browsers use to display
documents in a rich format. The codes are ordinarily placed within corner brackets. The way a user would
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instruct a browser to display text in italics would be to insert italics codes on either side of the text, such
as the following. <i>This text would be displayed in italics.</i>

HTTP

HyperText Transfer Protocol. This is the language used by the World Wide Web to transfer files during a
client-server session.

World Wide Web (WWW)

The World Wide Web is a client-server application system which transfers text, graphics and sound files
through the HyperText Transfer Protocol. The WWW clients are called Web Browsers. There are many
available, such as Mosaic and Netscape, both of which are compatible with PC, Macintosh and Unix.

DNS:- DNS stands for Domain Name System. A domain is a unique string (Gingernameclub.com)
associated with an IP address. An IP address is a string of numbers used to identify a computer or
resource on a network or internet. The Domain Name System (DNS) is a network of directories on the
internet used to resolve host names (e.g. www.gingernameclub.com) into machine-readable IP addresses
(e.g. 192.168.106.81).

Every computer, node, device or resource on the internet has a unique name and unique IP address. There
are millions of such devices or resources. Computers communicate on the internet using the machine-
readable IP addresses. Imagine if we are to remember the IP addresses of all the pages we needed to visit
or resources we needed to access. Browsing the internet would be anything but fun.

Well, the DNS is what makes our lives so easy. It makes navigating this complex network of IP addresses
user-friendly. It is the internet's address book/directory. It is the footman of our internet requests! The
World Wide Web depends on the DNS to function as we know it today. Yes! DNS is that important!

WORKING:- The actual name server responds to browser's requests by supplying name to-address
conversions. When it does not know the answer, the resolver will ask another name server for the
information.

When you type a URL, your browser sends a request to the closest name server. If that server has ever
filleted a request for the same host name (within a time period set by the administrator to prevent passing
old information), it will locate the information in its cache and reply.

If the name server is unfamiliar with the domain name, the resolver will attempt to "solve" the problem by
asking a server farther up the tree. If that does not work, the second server will ask yet another-until it
finds one that knows. Once the information is located, it is passed back to your browser, and you can do
your work. Usually this process occurs quickly but occasionally it takes an excruciatingly long time. In
the worst cases, you will get a dialogue box that says the domain name doesn't exist even though you
know domain well it does.

This happens because the authoritative server is slow replaying to the first, and your computer gets tired
of waiting so it times out (drops the connection). But if you try again, there is good chance it will work,
because the authoritative server has enough time to reply, and your name server has stored the
information in its cache.

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