- How
the Internet Works (6th Edition) by Preston Gralla ISBN:
0789725827
- The Internet does many
wondrous things, but an alarming number of them remain "black
boxes" whose interior workings are a mystery. In How the
Internet Works, Preston Gralla shows how information gets from
here to there on the world's biggest computer network. With assistance
from illustrators Sarah Ishidi, Mina Reimer, and Stephen Adams,
Gralla presents a series of full-color spreads, each of which
picks apart some aspect of Internet technology. You'll find explanations
of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), Web browsers, electronic
mail, Web search engines, multimedia, and more. There's a spread
that shows how bulk e-mailers (known as spammers) extract addresses
from newsgroups and send advertisements to them. There's also
an excellent graphical depiction of how the infamous Melissa
trojan horse wreaked havoc among Microsoft Outlook users in early
1999.
Some of the explanations are weaker than others. While Gralla
gives a lot of details about how Internet telephony works, his
explanation of PointCast consists of, to paraphrase, "You
install the special client software, which communicates with
the special server software and presents news to you." It's
more of a definition than an explanation. The book is split about
evenly between simple definition entries and detailed, commendable
how-it-works entries. There's no glossary per se, but the index
is good. --David Wall
- Topics covered: Internet
architecture, addressing, domain names, routers, connectivity,
e-mail, newsgroups, Web browsers, push technologies, and Internet
safety and security. --This text refers to an out of print or
unavailable edition of this title.
- From Book News, Inc.
Friendly as a wet pup--which is a little too affectionate. This
is a mostly graphic exposition with bright backgrounds &
drawings. It is inviting, but for $25, one can get much more
hard data from a hundred other titles. Annotation copyright Book
News, Inc. Portland, Or. --This text refers to an out of print
or unavailable edition of this title.
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